The universe is much bigger than big

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Fri Sep 28, 2012, 04:18 AM - Edit history (15)

Everyone reading this grew up knowing the universe was far too big for a human to really grasp. Hell, just the distance to the sun is already too much. (How can light take eight minutes to get somewhere?)

But some of us grew up with much smaller or larger unimaginably large universes. It was already too big to grasp in 1920, and our estimation of its size keeps growing. By 1980-1990 our estimation of the universe was so much larger than it had been that it has become, in my mind, a philosophical difference in kind, not merely degree.

Your grandfather's infinitely vast universe turned out to be just our neighborhood in a much larger universe. We went to the moon while thinking the universe was a fraction of itself.

The modern inflationary model of the universe is so big that not only could the universe not have sensibly been made for mankind, 90% of the universe is utterly unknowable to human beings. It is impossible for any information about most of the universe to ever reach a human mind, except by deduction.

How did the universe as we know it get so big? Well...

Einstein made us think some very weird and unfamiliar things about the universe (curved space, time running at different speeds, etc.) but at the same time provided a comforting sense of completeness. Einstein's universe was really pretty classical, with the universal speed limit of the speed of light providing an almost theological absolute. Nothing can travel faster than 186,000 miles a second.

And when we realized that the universe is all expanding from a central point then we know it started somewhere, as a point. That's comforting too... a real beginning. The big bang begs the question what preceded the big bang, but religion begs the question "who made God?" Either way there is a comfort to an, "In the beginning..."

And that starting point was not infinitely long ago. About 14 billion years. So we have a speed limit and finite time-line, and thus we had an absolute limit on the size of the universe.

If the big bang was 14 billion years ago and two photons came flying out of the big bang in opposite directions they can be no further apart than 28 billion light years today. That is a very long distance, and a scale beyond our real comprehension, but it is sensible. We can follow the reasoning.

Granted, we had to accept that there are things outside the "observable universe," things too far away for us to know about because they are more than 14 billion light years away. Since we are not at the very center a 14 billion light year radius from Earth is going to miss part of the universe.

But since we are not on the very edge then a 14 billion LY radius surely covered most of the universe. Our "observable universe" was most of what existed, and the invisible (to us) parts were known to be nestled over on the other side of a sphere of space no larger than 28 billion light year across and, for matter, considerably less. Two photons could be 28 billion light years apart by now but no two stars could be... stars cannot travel at the speed of light.

A big universe, yes, but with a beginning and a strictly limited size. Cozy enough.

And people readjusted and reintegrated ancient thinking into this vast but limited scientific universe and reached some psychological comfort zone.

But then science played a mean trick on us.

Nothing can move through space faster than the speed of light but we figured out from studying the thing that the space between things can expand faster than the speed of light... and it did.

D'oh!

The big bang didn't just spew stuff out into a thing called space. It created space. Space is a thing with properties, not mere nothingness.

And early in the whole process space inflated at a prodigious clip... considerably faster than the speed of light. Our two opposite-direction photons have each only carved their way through 14 billion light years of space, from their perspective, but all space, everywhere, was inflating like crazy around them and behind them so those two photons might be 50 billion light years apart... 100 billion... we don't know for sure.

And even though stars cannot move at the speed of light, or even close to it, there are (we believe today) stars much more than 28 billion light years apart! The stars (or mostly, the matter that later became stars) ended up with a lot of space in between, but they never crossed all that space.

A usual analogy is raisins in a rising cake. The cake in between the raisins is swelling up so the raisins get further apart from each other even though they are not moving through cake. (I don't pretend to really understand this, mind you. But it is our best hypothesis of how to account for observable facts.)

So though our universe is "only" about 14 billion years old, it has a radius much larger than 14 billion light years. And the part of the universe beyond our observable universe is... well, we don't know anymore. All that we can ever possibly see is just a sliver of an invisible (to us) universe of uncertain hugeness. And the whole mess seems to be accelerating... getting bigger and bigger faster and faster.

We can only see and measure with things that are limited to the speed of light so the bulk of the universe is lost to us. And the same goes for anyone someplace else in the universe. The thing is literally too big for anyone to see. (Fortunately, it isn't like the blind men and the elephant. We think the physical laws are the same throughout the universe so everyone just sees oodles of stars and galaxies. So more like the blind men and the garden hose... probably similar whichever part you're holding.)

The modern demotion of our observable universe to local news is a bit much to take because the size of our little observable corner of our universe is already a fricking joke! Beyond imagination.

We used to think our galaxy was the universe, and that the andromeda galaxy was a nebula within the Milky Way. Then we thought maybe there was us and a few other galaxies. Here's what we know today just from what we can see of our tiny visible part of the whole (mostly invisible) universe...


http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021420208

And that mess of galaxies in our observable universe isn't even all that is within our little visible bubble. There's more we can't see because there's stuff in the way, or it came into being later so the light couldn't have made it here.

Note the little square next to the moon. All those galaxies in the picture are seen in that little square. And right next to that little square is another tiny bit of sky with just as many galaxies. And so on. And we have every reason to think the whole invisible (to us) universe is just as jam-packed with galaxies as our little neighborhood.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has 300 billion stars in it. We now think there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, most invisible to us, each with hundreds of billions of stars. I think that is 60 Trillion Billions of stars.

What is that... like 9,000,000,000,000 stars for every person on Earth?

Even if we are the only intelligent life forms in our entire galaxy (unlikely) we are still like the old saying about New York. "If you're one in a million we've got fourteen people just like you." Except it's billions.

If physical laws throughout the universe are constant (we think so) then everything that has ever happened here has had a chance to happen an almost infinite number of other places.

Is there life out there? Yes. Is there intelligent life? Yes. Are there cats? Yes. Are there tabby cats. Yes. Are there tabby cats with blue collars and one white paw named Mister Wuggles? Sure... probably. Why not?

Since an alien tabby cat cannot travel faster than light we will probably never meet alien Mister Wuggles. The same incredible bigness that suggests that almost anything that can exist in our universe's natural laws probably does exist also means that it is possible, or perhaps even probable that those billions of other living worlds are all too far away for us to ever know anything of. (Because we do have to follow the Einstein speed limit, even if the fabric of space doesn't always do so.)

One of the few upsides of all this is that we probably don't have to worry that we humans can ever destroy the universe. If it was possible somebody out there would have already done it.

[tridim]

1. I like to look up at night and think about all the photons from the Universe falling on my retina.

Trillions and trillions of them every millisecond. If only we could "see" better.

[cthulu2016]

3. On a hot day I visualize a sphere the size of earth's orbit

and consider that the same amount of sunlight is hitting every bit of that imaginary sphere.

Thats a lot of energy!

[Ikonoklast]

7. See: Dyson Sphere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

[central scrutinizer]

9. I give a problem like that to my algebra students

What is the surface area of that sphere compared with the area of the circle that represents the earth? What portion of the sun's energy hits the earth? Express the answer as a percent and decimal. Good exercise in dealing with scientific notation.

[tama]

78. QED,

a wonder of math, speaks of "probability amplitudes". "Photons from the Universe falling" is very loose and confusing language as far as the theory goes, not least because of the mystery that what we see is not a random blur of falling photons - but stars! Attempts to think clearly about quantum measurement problem and decoherence (and about sensual experience itself!?!) require letting go of Newtonian and even Einsteinian notions of time and causality. That's why the guy said "shut up and calculate". And of course we don't.

[Smickey]

2. Thanks for this.

Short circuits the noodle and helps to keep things in perspective.

[ZombieHorde]

4. I suspose there also could have been more than one big bang as well.

There could have been billions of big bangs. There could be one happening right now.

[caraher]

5. In fact, that seems to be a consequence of the inflationary theories

If you take the physics seriously it seems more likely than not that there are also lots and lots of other universes with which we have no causal contact created by the same processes as our own.

[tridim]

6. Well yea, our big bang (or whatever it is) is still banging. So it's happening now.

I like the fairly new theory of big bangs happening within black hole singularities. A biological/evolutionary model of the universe.

If correct it would mean that our Universe is a child of an infinite line of mother universes, and a parent of billions of child universes. Universes with lots of big stars and black holes thrive, while others die out. It would also mean our universe has a sort of DNA!

[Blue_In_AK]

8. You know those five stripes represent the five pillars of Islam, right?

It has to be true because I read it on Facebook.

[cpwm17]

30. This speculative theory as I understand it

notes that in long lasting universes that are able to condense matter into galaxies; suns; planets, including planets with life; are the same universes that are able to produce the most black holes. These black holes are able to spawn even more universes (speculation), which are very similar to the parent universe. So the more black holes a universe produces, the more universes that same universe produces. So, the Multiverse (existence with multiple universes) evolves universes with planets able to evolve life.

[tridim]

48. I just love how this theory expresses itself as a fractal.

It seems like nature almost always organizes itself into fractals, at least on Earth.

Logic says that the universe and a potential multiverse would do the same thing. IMO it's the key to understanding everything.

[cpwm17]

31. I think it is almost guaranteed that our Universe isn't alone.

Last edited Tue Oct 2, 2012, 02:46 AM - Edit history (1)

Non-existence (nothingness) is impossible since everything arrived through an existing physics. The existing physics is something (not nothing); and since some always existing physics was able to produce our Universe, it’s likely that it has produced infinite universes through infinite time.

With only one universe the odds of having a seemingly designed universe with conditions suitable for life are extremely small. This apparent design of our Universe can easily be explained by the Multiverse (more than one universe) theory. The Multiverse brings up the possibility of there being a huge (or infinite) number of universes, and also the possibility of there being a huge number (or infinite number) of universes with life. Astronomer Martin Reese covers this in his book “Just Six Numbers”. If any number were minutely changed, our Universe would have been completely different.

For example: if the amount of matter in our Universe would have been a tiny fraction different, our Universe would have quickly collapsed or quickly flown apart and no life could have arisen. Some have proposed a many universes theory to explain this (each universe with its own conditions). This greatly increases the odds of there being a universe suitable for life.

Here’s astronomer Martin Reese’s reasoning for the existence of the Multiverse at 11:10 to 26:40 in video – ignore the rest:

?t=11m10s

[GreenStormCloud]

110. In that context, "right now" has no meaning.

A separate Big Bang starting its own universe would also be starting its own time. Its time would have no connection to our time. So the entire birth, life, and death of that other universe is all happening "right now".

[bhikkhu]

10. "If it was possible somebody out there would have already done it"...

who knows - maybe there was a perfectly good universe and somebody did destroy it, and we're living in the blown-up remains? (there's a good sci-fi story in there somewhere!)

[CBGLuthier]

98. Jack Chalker's Well World series covered that

Sooner or later in every universe some idiots figure out a way to destroy it.

[Dedicated Mind]

11. way too deep

deepak chopra has a good lecture on science and spirituality. http://www.nationalcathedral.org/

[musiclawyer]

12. I challenged my kids by asking

if they thought the big bang started out in a big white room?

They said, no.

I said, why?

They said, because that's a dumb idea.

Then I asked, what if the big bang was simply concentrated energy from another universe coming through a black hole that got too dense and too hot, so, kaboom?

They looked at each other and said, "perhaps."

And I said, well, think about it, and I tucked them in!

[ldf]

13. to me, this photo just reinforces my own humble opinion

(and my conclusion has evolved)

that most of what scientists throw out as theories about the universe is just crap being thrown against the wall to see if it will stick.

i have decided that infinity means just that. never ending.

and two things are infinite. time, and space.

this photo, taken of the past from about 14.5 billion years ago (while the so-called universe created by the so-called big bang is only 14.7 billion years old) looks just like all the other photos, regardless of how far back in time they are representing.

when the hubble picks a tiny point of black in a photo and enlarges it with a long time lapse, the same thing appears.

yet more of the same.

the whole idea of a beginning, i think, is bound up in religious beliefs. "in the beginning, god created...." and "at the end of time there will be judgment....."

there was no beginning to time (thus no creation), and there is no end to time (thus no judgment).

there is no end to space, thus the universe doesn't stop. it just goes on and on and on, which is what the photos are proving.

when scientists "theorize" what happens a fraction of a second after the big bang it is beyond ludicrous.

when scientists look at the skies and say "there isn't enough matter there... there must be something else, it's DARK MATTER!" i say bullshit. were they taking into account the billions of additional constellations they are finding in these photos? and the billions in the next photos?

and the dark matter is what is pushing everything apart... to the point where molecules, even atoms are going to separate. bullshit.

i think there may have been a small "big bang", resulting from many black holes combining to act like the hoover vacuum cleaners of space, cleaning out an area of space of all matter. but what happens in many scenarios (you know, sort of like global warming), a critical mass occurs, and a new cycle begins. the density of matter in the mega black hole gets to a point to where it explodes and does begin a creation of new cosmic matter.

but in a universe that is infinite in scope, and unending in time, those small "big bangs" are happening constantly.

but since we just can't grasp the concept of infinity, we dumb it down to something that we can grasp, even though it is sooooo off the mark.

coming to this conclusion has caused me a dilemma.

given that time and space is infinite, even all that we conceive of the universe, will end. which means we are not even a speck in time and space. to all intents and purposes, we will have never existed since there will be no remnant or indication that we did.

so in transferring that conclusion to my everyday life, my decision is that i just need to get through this, one day at a time, and in a way that i do not feel that i have hurt anyone or anything.

at least i will be able to sleep. hopefully. and when i am gone, that's it. no biggie.

so when they say "don't sweat the small stuff", they don't realize that, in the grand scope of the infinite, there is nothing BUT small stuff.

and it all never existed.

[RobertEarl]

15. Orgasms

That's what the big bang is or was if it ever did and since i did it might be?

Beyond that... I got nothing. But i really did like what you, ldf, said about everything and all that.

[CrispyQ]

22. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Very interesting. There's a tee shirt out there that reads:

Don't sweat the small stuff.
It's all small stuff.

Did you create that?

[eqfan592]

26. No offense, but...

...your post demonstrates a great deal of ignorance when it comes to both science and the scientific method.

[cpwm17]

29. Perhaps you could enlighten everyone with your wisdom

Last edited Thu Sep 27, 2012, 01:27 PM - Edit history (1)

It's fun to think and talk about existence, without wet blanket religions and non-productive naysayers getting in the way.

(edit) I first thought you were replying to the OP. Still you could counter the mistakes.

[opiate69]

36. I`ll take a stab at one...

when scientists look at the skies and say "there isn't enough matter there... there must be something else, it's DARK MATTER!" i say bullshit. were they taking into account the billions of additional constellations they are finding in these photos? and the billions in the next photos?

That is simply not how the dark matter theory works. Cosmologists looked at specific galaxies, such as our own or Andromeda, and calculated the mass of visible objects (stars, gasses, etc) then compared that to the immense size of said galaxies and determined that, within that galaxy, the amount of mass and the amount of gravity necessary to keep the galaxy from just dispersing into intergalactic space did not compute. These ultra-distant galaxy clusters don`t figure into the equations because the equations are for individual galaxies and clusters, and not for the universe on the whole.

[eqfan592]

64. This is what I was talking about.

Sorry for not elaborating in my earlier post, but that can be a pain when posting from my cellphone.

[opiate69]

99. no worries. glad I could help and even happier I got it basically right! lol

[cpwm17]

39. You don't trust science

but the scientific method has proven itself reliable for finding the best explanations for how things work. No other method compares – including deliberate ignorance and faith.

Scientists know the size of our universe through several methods. The intrinsic brightness of several objects are known. By observing their apparent brightness from Earth, and comparing it with their intrinsic brightness, scientists can know how far they are.

Through this method scientists have discovered that an astronomical object's distance is proportional to its receding velocity away from Earth. This allows them to measure the distance of all objects by their receding velocity. These various methods paint a consistent picture concerning our Universe's size and speed of expansion.

The beginning of our Universe isn't the beginning of existence and time. There is great evidence for the Big Bang which scientists study in detail.

"and the dark matter is what is pushing everything apart... to the point where molecules, even atoms are going to separate. bullshit."

Yes it is bullshit, and scientists don't claim that. The internal forces in atoms, planets, stars, and galaxies are much too great to separate these objects by any very weak dark energy, which only comes into play on extremely huge scales. Scientists don't claim to know what the dark energy is, and some scientists are looking for alternate explanations for the accelerating expansion of our Universe. Only science can find the answers.

[bemildred]

42. Yes. Except there are no infinities, and if there were we could not observe them.

I have always considered "dark matter" to be name for a fudge factor, so I agree, but it is not bullshit, it is something we don't understand, and therefore full of possibilities.

[Posteritatis]

44. "I don't understand this, so they can't either." Oy. (nt)

[pokerfan]

72. pretty much

See Dunning–Kruger effect

Them scientists are just full of shit.

[Brewinblue]

79. I agree 100% about there being no beginning of time.

The only logical answer is the Universe is infinitely old, and infinitely large. This doesn't rule out a Big Bang, it just means that there have been an infinite number of big bangs. A beginning requires either a creator or a point of absolute nothingness, neither of which answer any questions without raising bigger ones -- who created the creator, and where did this creator come from, or if there was absolute nothingness, where did the mass needed to create a singularity come from?

My guess is that the universe has, forever, expanded and collapsed on itself, creating an endless cycle of big bang, expansion, collapse, repeat. This idea, in one form or another, is beginning to gather a measure of support among theoretical physicists.

http://www.staplenews.com/home/2010/11/20/have-we-found-the-universe-that-existed-before-the-big-bang.html

[GreenStormCloud]

111. Nope, the rebounding cyclic universe idea is NOT gaining support.

That one is pretty well settled. The Universe is excelerating its expansion and is already faster than escape velocity. It will expand forever.

[cthulu2016]

114. That doesn't help much

No matter how we describe time or space there is always an unknown before and an unknown outside. An infinity is contained within a larger infinity, and so on.

An infinite and circularly cyclical universe would merely raise the question of where an infinite and cyclical universe came from.

[coalition_unwilling]

102. I'd be interested to get your take on one of my latest essays (reposted here):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021156152

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. We're alone.

And although it's possible I'm wrong, I'll never lose the bet.

The Fermi Paradox has only one obvious conclusion. We should treat this planet, this solar system and this galaxy like we're the only ones capable of caretaking and spreading life.

[EOTE]

17. The Fermi Paradox isn't a "paradox" at all.

It basically states that given how large the universe is, it should be absolutely loaded with life, so why haven't we been visited yet? Well, the reason for that is that the spaces involved between solar systems is unimaginably huge. So while we may not be visited by extra terrestrial life forms any time soon, it's most likely simply because of the spaces involved. Paradoxes by themselves don't really provide conclusions. Life outside of our solar system might be exceedingly rare, but I think it's unthinkable to believe that we're all this universe has to offer in terms of life.

[lumberjack_jeff]

19. Forget "visits". The galaxy should be saturated with radio noise.

I think the belief (and that's all it is) in extraterrestrial life is a comforting fiction. If you believe that this isn't the only place in the universe with life, it allows you to comfortably treat it in a cavalier fashion.

I'd like to see the space elevator built and life spread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis

[EOTE]

25. Of course it's just a belief. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

But once again, the Fermi "paradox" isn't a paradox at all. Why radio noise? Radio would be one of the most insanely inefficient way of transmitting data there is. And given how we're only capable of monitoring such a tiny fraction of the sky, what makes you think it's likely we'd pick up on those signals even if they were very common?

And why on earth would this belief lead us to treat the earth in a cavalier fashion? Certainly a good number of earth's inhabitants DO treat it cavalierly (to be kind), but I'd say that the more likely they are to believe that the earth is alone in terms of harboring life, the more likely they are to treat the earth like crap. Today's fundamentalist christians get fuming mad at even the suggestion of intelligent life elsewhere, yet they're the ones who are most likely to deny global warming and any other warnings scientists provide on the fate of our planet.

Anyone with more than a few functioning brain cells knows that the earth is our only home for quite some time. Those who work to destroy the planet don't do so because they think that a new home planet is right around the corner.

[lumberjack_jeff]

27. Question 1) there's only one electromagnetic spectrum

Radio and microwaves are the part of the spectrum most efficient for communicating long distances.

Question 2) For the same reason that belief in the afterlife causes us to behave in certain ways while we're alive... which ties into your other statements about fundies. They could care less about the earth and the life on it because they're going to get raptured away any day now, and God is going to create another earth for their benefit. They not only believe that life is plentiful, they believe that recreating the passenger pigeon is a finger-snap of their omnipotent God away.

Fundies and those who think that Star Wars is real are partners; to both groups, the earth isn't special in any way.

[EOTE]

32. Question number one isn't really a question, it's a statement and a specious one at that.

But if you're suggesting that radio and microwaves are the most efficient way of communicating long distances, that's simply not true. Lasers can communicate far more quickly and efficiently than radio and microwaves. However, it's most likely that any advanced civilization would be communicating over some form of broad or multiband. That's most likely why we, while looking for nothing beyond single band communication, encounter absolutely nothing intelligible. And once again, even if we WERE looking for radio waves, what makes you think we'd be likely to find them given what an insanely small portion of the sky we're capable of monitoring?

And you seem to be entirely contradicting yourself with your second statement. You seem to admit that those who are most resistant to the thought of intelligent life not being unique to our earth are those ones most likely to destroy it.

[bongbong]

49. Allow me to chime in

Radio signals are the UNINTENDED side effect of many man/alien-made processes, and even some natural processes. You don't need to purposely beam signals into space.

We haven't seen a thing.

> However, it's most likely that any advanced civilization would be communicating over some form of broad or multiband.

How do you know that? Are you visiting Earth or something?

[EOTE]

50. Sure, but not radio signals sent with the expressed intent of being found.

Radio signals might travel rather far, but not in a focused manner. Our chances of stumbling upon signals sent from intelligent life given our current methods of searching is incredibly low.

And how do I know that intelligent life forms wouldn't be using radio signals? Well for the same reason that we know that intelligent civilizations on earth wouldn't be using vacuum tubes. It's old, inefficient technology. If we encounter any civilizations using radio to transmit data, then they're almost exactly as far along technologically as we are. I believe if we're actually to receive signals from alien life, it would be from life far more advanced than our own.

[bongbong]

105. Yummy

> If we encounter any civilizations using radio to transmit data, then they're almost exactly as far along technologically as we are. I believe if we're actually to receive signals from alien life, it would be from life far more advanced than our own.

That's a secondary point of my main point. It's hinted at in the movie "Contact" where the alien who is impersonating Jodie Foster's father is so different from us that it has no way to communicate with the "lesser species" (us) than by creating a situation that you could create with recreational drugs.

IOW, we really wouldn't be able to learn anything from aliens that are too advanced (or the opposite) from us. Sure we would know that we're "not alone", but so what?

So perhaps there are plenty of aliens out there, but they are on such a different evolutionary path that contacting them would make no real difference to us.

But the idea of "how different could aliens be?" has been addressed by astro-anthropologists (I guess that's what they are) who have stated that any kind of life would *kind of* resemble ourselves because of limits imposed by physical laws.

But - another but - then who knows if physical constraints (like Planck's Constant) are subtly different in remote sections of the universe?

Lotsa food for thought. It's all yummy.

[EOTE]

109. Great movie (and book).

Since I was a kid, that was the way I had hoped our first contact would go. I think it's incredibly unlikely that we'll encounter life LESS advanced than we are any time in the relatively near future because if they're less advanced than us, they'd have no way of seeking us out. As for the more advanced life forms, I'd like to believe that they'd have some way of imparting their wisdom if we ever met.

And given that I'd imagine the mechanisms of evolution would be pretty much the same on any hospitable planet, I'd like to think that an intelligent civilization we find (our who finds us) would resemble us at least superficially.

If first contact is made in my lifetime and the result is anticlimactic, I'd be utterly crushed.

[lumberjack_jeff]

59. a) they were answers to your questions. b) "specious" means plausible-looking falsehood.

Maybe it is false. There may be more than one electromagnetic spectrum, I suppose. One powered by leprechauns and unicorn farts? One that operates on subspace tachyon bursts? What manner of enchantment do you propose this "broad or multiband" communication uses, if not electromagnetic frequencies?

Lasers only work well if the sender and receiver are stationary and at known positions.

By all means, keep looking. Although I'm not wrong, it'd be better if I was, and I wouldn't have to continue to be so annoyed at those who are depending on magic to save us.

[EOTE]

60. Specious means factually wrong, but pleasant looking.

And it's utterly ludicrous to think that a civilization a fair bit more advanced than ours would be using radio as a means of communication. I never suggested that there was more than one electromagnetic spectrum, so your comments there are nothing but strawmen. You seem to be under the impression that radio and microwaves are all that there is to the EM spectrum, I can assure you that's far from the truth. Do you even know what broadband is? It's the use of MULTIPLE frequencies in order to send data. So by looking at one frequency at a time, we're going to have exactly zero luck finding anything that resembles a signal from an intelligent lifeform.

[lumberjack_jeff]

61. Your argument is undermined by the hyperbole deployed.

It's "ludicrous" to believe that science as we know it applies to them? Yours is a 100% appeal to magic. Worse, it's magic disguised as science. "The universe is big, so therefore it's crawling with ET... but you can't see them because, umm, they're invisible, that's the ticket! Their technology is so wicked smart that they are invisible! And they don't need radio! They use telepathy n'stuff. It's scientifically indisputable!"

Broadband signals still show up as nonrandom data when looking even at only one frequency. You might not be able to decode it, without looking at adjacent frequencies too, but you couldn't mistake it for natural phenomena.

[eqfan592]

65. Sorry, but you're working with a lot of fail here.

Not to mention your own amount of hyperbole on display in your first paragraph.

The more we understand about life and where it can form and survive, the far more likely it is that it has formed in other places of the universe. MANY other places most likely. Given that, there is also a strong probability that other intelligent life has also developed in other parts of the universe.

Now you seem to think that simply because we haven't heard anything from them yet that it is a slam dunk that there is no other intelligent life out there. Given the extremely small amount of time we've even been listening, as well as the small amount of space we can listen too at any given point, as well as how unlikely it is that a signal would both be strong enough to get here and still be deciphered AND that there would be nothing between us and the source to garble it, and assuming that they didn't devise a different form of long range communication that worked outside of the electromagnetic spectrum (something dealing with quantum entanglement for instance) thus causing them to only use the EM spectrum for a short period of time, how you can honestly make such an assertion and still call it even remotely scientific is simply beyond me.

That's not to say that it isn't worth listening (because its all we can do right now), but you are drawing a completely ridiculous conclusion from the available data.

[lumberjack_jeff]

68. The "available data" includes one datapoint of a planet with life.

And one datapoint of a planet with intelligent life. Same datapoint.

That's not hyperbole. There is zero evidence of extraterrestrial life. Zero.

Is it a slam dunk that there's no one out there? No, it's the baseline assumption given the complete absence of evidence to the contrary. It's not up to me to prove the negative.

The fact that the universe is big isn't proof of anything. Learn more about quantum entanglement and listen in on those channels.

There are lots of good reasons to keep looking. In the meantime, there is one profoundly important reason to act on the baseline assumption; this planet is the universe's first and only seed of life.

[eqfan592]

71. It's a baseline assumption that flies completely in the face of all probability.

Which is why it is a next to useless baseline assumption.

I understand that it is your desire to make sure we keep our planet healthy, but that isn't a reason ignore probability.

[lumberjack_jeff]

76. No it doesn't.

You can't extrapolate anything with one datapoint.

The haystack may be really, really big, but there's no reason to assume that there simply must be more than one needle in it.

If any value in the Drake equation is zero, then so is the result.

I recommend the book Rare Earth by Peter Ward.

[eqfan592]

80. One data point?

We have millions of data points in a multitude of different environments. They just all happen to be located on a single planet. However, all that data points to a very high probability of life developing elsewhere.

I'm familiar with the book, as well as the assumptions it makes to generate its conclusions. Assumptions that actually DO have a single data point (our earth, and it being the only sort of environment that can yield complex animal life). Suffice it to say that the book (and its premise) has not aged well as we continue to learn more and more about other star systems and the planets that orbit them (and the number and location of those planets), not to mention discoveries in biology (like a form of multicellular life that doesn't need oxygen, but hydrogen, which flies in the face of one of the primary assumptions in the book).

[cpwm17]

75. Things that science has no evidence to be possible, are assumed to not exist

Last edited Fri Sep 28, 2012, 03:11 PM - Edit history (1)

That is the default position.

We do have evidence that life is possible, and we are it. In a vast Universe the logical assumption is that there is life beyond Earth. There is no need to invent a new reality.

Also, in an infinite Universe or Multiverse there is guaranteed to be infinite amount of life beyond Earth. Since the possible, given infinite opportunities, is guaranteed to happen an infinite number of times. Our own existence proves that life is possible.

[cthulu2016]

81. There is also no evidence of Earth sized planets outside the solar system

Last edited Fri Sep 28, 2012, 04:10 AM - Edit history (1)

The smallest outside planet we have deduced the existence of from observation is still larger than Earth. But nobody would cite that fact as seriously suggesting that our solar system may be unique in having such small rocky inner planets like Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury.

The numbers are such that the idea of anything in our solar system being unique in the universe approaches zero unless we can identify something singular about the conditions here.

We have no evidence of life elsewhere but we do have some evidence of is that the laws of nature are universal, the periodic table of elements here is the same as the periodic table in the andromeda galaxy, stars everywhere produce pretty much the same elements... that there is nothing local about the base necessities of life.

Our best scientific understanding of the cosmos is that liquid water exists on billions of billions of other planets. (And does not exist on billions and billions of others.) Hydrogen and carbon are plentiful on billions of billions of other planets with liquid water.

And given billions of years of collisions and combinations of a zillion to the zillionth power hydrogen and carbon molecules something is going to develop either metabolism or inheritability, and then develop the other.

Keep in mind that if life hadn't developed here when it did then it could have the next day, and the next, and the nest. For billions of years. (Without micro-organisms to eat them, the seas would still be a literal soup of hydrocarbons every day of that billions of years.)

Life will happen time and time and time again. It's not really an unusual process.

One of the coolest developments of the post DNA discovery era is the realization that there was nothing extraordinary about the development of life here.

As for intelligent life, the same applies. If man hadn't come along when we did then we could come along a billion years from now.

The number of planets with life will probably far outnumber those with any sentient life, so the intelligent life planets may be in the billions, rather than the trillions that must surely have life.

But given all of that, it is possible and perhaps even likely that we will never exchange information with an extraterrestrial sentient species.

[EOTE]

92. Your belief is that advanced technological civilizations would be using our technology which is in

its infancy. That's utterly ludicrous. You think I'm applying some entirely different standard to whatever civilization we might be speaking of when it's you that is ignoring science entirely when you ignore its limitations. And your statement "broadband signals still show up as nonrandom data when looking even at only one frequency" Uhh, sure chief. And where is the slightest bit of proof for that statement? Pulling stuff out of your ass is not a substitute for logical debate. Try looking at hash information for encrypted data and tell me that that looks "nonrandom" to you. Try looking at a single channel of a multiplexed signal and you tell me that looks "nonrandom". You don't know very much about data transmission, you actually know next to nothing about it. That's fine, but you shouldn't pretend that you do. This is what I've done my entire adult life. You trying to get an education on the fly is no way to make an argument.

[lumberjack_jeff]

94. I'm not operating on belief. You are.

The existence of extraterrestrial life is a plausible theory that deserves investigation.

So far, that investigation hasn't turned up anything. This fact doesn't, by any stretch of the imagination, give more credence to the belief.

You're reminding me of this book.

Festinger stated that five conditions must be present if someone is to become a more fervent believer after a failure or disconfirmation:
A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he behaves.
The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief.
The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.
The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence that has been specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselytize or persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.

I get that it's frustrating and difficult to create and defend a scientific-sounding worldview based on magic, but really, there's no call to insult *my* intelligence.

[EOTE]

97. There is no intelligence to speak of.

In your head, that is. Certainly with regard to this subject. You are a perfect example of how a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. In your case, a tiny speck of knowledge. Once again, as of yesterday, you hadn't a clue as to what broadband is, now you're trying to pretend that you're an expert. To someone who actually has knowledge of this, you come off looking well beyond ignorant. Ignorance is excusable. Incredible ignorance combined with massive arrogance is far from excusable. You've proven that you're incapable of being taught. Your fundamentalist beliefs cannot be changed, so why even try? It's not frustrating attempting to explain complicated subjects to ignorant people, that can be fun. It's insanely frustrating trying to teach anything to someone who insists that their incredibly lacking understanding of something is a stone cold fact. You are a perfect demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect. You know so little of this issue that you vastly overestimate your own knowledge. If you were to be taught, you'd have to first realize that just about everything you "know", is in fact warm bullshit.

[lumberjack_jeff]

104. Clap louder Peter!

Tinkerbell's life depends on it!

Look, your over-the-top head-exploding invective, combined with abundant world-class rationalizations, is exactly what I'm talking about. You have as much invested in your belief in ET as the most committed fundie has in their beliefs.

Arguing this with you is as pointless as arguing about creation/evolution with a watchmaker. Their superior understanding of watchmaking makes their insights into the concept of irreducible complexity invulnerable.

In your case, you know something about data communication so you should be accorded the last word (albeit nonsensical) about how the empire/federation/bugs communicate without being detectible by prosaic human technology.

The burden of proof is on you. Call Gort to come set me straight if necessary. I'm completely open to evidence, but not conjecture.

[LanternWaste]

107. You appear to place rather a large amount of faith in your position.

You appear to place rather a large amount of faith in your position. I imagine we all do.

[lumberjack_jeff]

108. On the contrary, I place none at all.

If someone ever discovers a radio signal, I become wrong. Until then, I'm not the one operating on faith.

Mostly, I object to the idea that it's safe to operate as if there's plenty of life out there, millions, gagillions of planets, if we really felt the need to look.

The OP looks at the picture of the universe and wonders how many Mos Eisleys are out there. I look at the picture, look at the way we're mistreating this world and worry that there's none.

One of the competing theories of the genesis of life is panspermia; the theory that all life started at one place and was dispersed throughout the galaxy.

Maybe here is intended to be that place, but the dominant life form figures that someone else has got it covered.

[EOTE]

93. Oh, and another thing.

Yesterday you had no clue as to what broadband is, now you claim to be somewhat of an expert on it. It's very clear to me when someone is speaking of something of which they know nothing. You think that you can have an argument while making up your arguments on the fly, that just doesn't work. I understand that you believe strongly about this, but your belief is based upon faith and nothing else. You're every bit as dogmatic as the fundamentalists you look down upon. Your thinking is as far from scientific as could be possible.

[lumberjack_jeff]

95. No, I was trying to sort out your gibberish.

"They don't use the electromagnetic spectrum, uh, they use broadband! Yeah, that's the ticket!"

It seemed too obvious at the time to mention that broadband (in the context of wireless communication) uses radio frequencies.

[EOTE]

96. If you're going to quote someone, you should actually use their words.

Because when you make up words and put quotes around them, you come off looking like an ignorant asshole. The fact that you still believe that broadband and the electromagnetic spectrum are mutually exclusive shows how incredibly ignorant you are on this subject. That's being kind, by the way. Most would say that you look like a dumbass.

[eqfan592]

101. Dude, you really should just stop.

It's getting more and more obvious that you are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY out of your element on this subject.

[cthulu2016]

45. Some science fiction writers have dealt with that

Fredrick Pohl's Gateway series is a good example. When humans start messing around in the galaxy and broadcasting willy-nilly another race comes to tell us to shut up because detectable signs of intelligent life attract a very dangerous species that everyone is afraid of.

More prosaically, even if intelligent life was commonplace, by cosmic standards, that would still probably mean 100s of light years between civilizations.

I don't know that anything we have ever done is detectable at such distances, and our future powerful communications will be more and more narrow-beam. Microwave lasers or whatever.

[CrispyQ]

21. This is one of my favorite sites:

Scale of the Universe

http://htwins.net/scale2/

I wish I'd written this program! It's so cool.

[EOTE]

33. I get a weird sense when visiting that site, kind of like a fear of heights.

Or perhaps agoraphobia. I find it hard to fathom things so incredibly small or so incredibly large without my stomach tying into knots.

[LuckyLib]

53. A person could get lost in this website. Amazing!

[pampango]

16. Excellent post, cthulu2016. Thanks. n/t

[villager]

91. What pampango said!

A quite enjoyable read.

Makes me want to write another time travel book!

[KatyMan]

18. I (and some others I'm sure) immediately thought of this:

“The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's definition of "Universe":

The Universe is a very big thing that contains a great number of planets and a great number of beings. It is Everything. What we live in. All around us. The lot. Not nothing. It is quite difficult to actually define what the Universe means, but fortunately the Guide doesn't worry about that and just gives us some useful information to live in it.

Area: The area of the Universe is infinite.

Imports: None. This is a by product of infinity; it is impossible to import things into something that has infinite volume because by definition there is no outside to import things from.

Exports: None, for similar reasons as imports.

Population: None. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination. Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why? Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is zero, therefore the average population of the Universe is zero, and so the total population must be zero.

Art: None. Because the function of art is to hold a mirror up to nature there can be no art because the Universe is infinite which means there simply isn't a mirror big enough.

Sex: None. Although in fact there is quite a lot, given the zero population of the Universe there can in fact be no beings to have sex, and therefore no sex happens in the Universe.”

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

20. But no matter how you do the math, the answer is still 42. nt

[blogslut]

57. +1

The Universe is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it all is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the corner-store chemist, but compared to space, that's peanuts.

[bemildred]

23. Yes, our metrics are useless outside of local scale/local space.

We do not, in fact, know what the fuck we are talking about otherwise.

[Amonester]

24. Good observations, and I'd like to add:

- Nothing proves that, in that space thing, there is only one universe. How would we know if there would not be billions or trillions of other universes out there, like an ocean of universes so far away that their light waves have not reached this location?

- Nothing proves that the speed of light is a limit in terms of speed.

Thanks for these thoughtful posts.

[WCGreen]

28. I came to this following conclusion long ago

If you believe there is such a thing as infinity or eternal life then by that definition there is no beginning.

I just ask then who invented god?

To me eternal is applicable coming and going.

[fadedrose]

35. Somebody who wanted to control other people invented god, I think...nt

[fadedrose]

34. I read it all, and sort of understood it...

and thank you for the way your tried to simplify it for us. . .

One thing you did was remind me that I haven't made a raisin cake for a long long time, and when I make it I will think of you and the universe. Hope it doesn't fall, the cake, I mean. It would sure be a helluvan omen....

Thanks for your post. I enjoyed it.

[fadedrose]

54. The cake grew, and as it's cooling, it's getting smaller

Is this a sign that the universes will cool from the expansion and shrink back to ??

Not such good news

[cthulu2016]

62. That has always been a hot topic of debate. Open or closed universe?

Back when we thought the size of the universe was strictly limited by the speed of light it was a straightforward physics question whether everything flying apart would run out of steam, slow down to a stop and then start collapsing back on itself.

If there was enough mass in the universe then we would eventually collapse back. That is called a closed universe. (And some even figured this collapse to a single point would start another explosion, and that the universe was thus cyclical.)

But with less total mass everything is flying apart fast enough to reach a kind of escape velocity from itself. That's a open universe. The expansion would continue forever, but with less and less energy. Literally colder, as you say.

(Either way, there's no life at the end of the story.)

We thought there wasn't enough mass in stars to "close" the universe, but we are recognizing how much matter there is outside of stars. Lots and lots of dust. Since that stuff doesn't emit light we can't see it, and it is called dark matter.

One way we know there is a lot of it is that the night sky isn't solid white. In between each two stars we see there are a gazillion other stars, some close, some far, in that part of the sky. So why isn't the sky 100% stars? We used to think it was because the universe was small... only so many stars in it. Now we think it is because there is a lot of dust that blocks light. Space is not as transparent as we assumed.

[fadedrose]

66. I wondered about the light....

getting back to the cake again, I was thinking tomorrow after it's all settled down and holding a piece up to the light to see if light passes through. Sounds crazy, but I got interested in the subject after it was put to me in a way I understood better.

So, this dark matter is why the night is dark, not so much as there's no sun on half the earth, but that the matter is dense. Just think how much light we'd get from the sun WITHOUT the dark matter - dust.

Hope the cook doesn't houseclean and get rid of it. The loss of an ozone layer would be nothing compared to something blowing the dust away. The oceans would boil, right? Am I making sense?

[cthulu2016]

82. It doesn't block the sun from us here. We're pretty close.

But even if there is only one tiny bit of something in a thousand of cubic miles of deep space, when we look from earth in any direction we are looking through billions of those units of a thousand cubic miles of space. So there will eventually be a bit a piece of dust in the path of every photon that would have otherwise made it to our eye.

The dust is, for the most part, incredibly thinly spaced. So thin that it doesn't interfere much with nearby stars. But over many, many, many light-years of space it adds up. (Matter in nearly empty space like microscopic water droplets in our air. They don't interfere much with things up close, but things at a distance look hazy. The longer the distance the more water droplets a photon has to miss along the way.)

When the Hubble takes these pictures of distant galaxies it is adding together all the photons over hours of time to put an image together...each photon like a jig-saw puzzle piece. But in real time, these things are invisible to our eyes.

[Zalatix]

73. That's not dark matter, that's a buncha Photino Birds. Angry Photino Birds!

[Eddie Haskell]

37. Einstein said, God does not play dice.

But even a supreme being might wish for a surprise party. We'll never know.

[Speck Tater]

38. When I was in high school, I used to stare up at the night sky and ponder...

...somewhere out there, in the vastness of infinite space, is a classroom full of alien teenagers who hate social studies class just as much as I do. It was a comforting thought to know that I was not merely a prisoner of the school district, but that I was part of a larger, and probably universal brotherhood of bored teenage lifeforms spread throughout the universe. It's nice to be part of something as huge as that.

[coalition_unwilling]

103. You hated social studies class but yet here you are on DU. There's an irony

in there somewhere, I think, although it's way OT

[Speck Tater]

106. Those who don't learn from history...

... are doomed to repeat it in summer school.

I was a math/science geek. I hated history and social studies. And yes, I did have to repeat a history class in summer school in order to graduate.

[coalition_unwilling]

112. The only plausible reason I can think of why a young person like you would coume to hate

history and social studies is that he or she had a horrible teacher (or teachers). Same goes for music and those who still are traumatized as adults because of abysmally poor instruction they received as children, I suppose.

I suspect you fell victim to a 'names, dates' type of 'giant figures' approach to history (where 'history' becomes for the most part a simple regurgitation of meaningless trivia or simplistic cause-effect statements), rather than an approach more centered in 'social history' and broad themes and questions.

[Speck Tater]

113. BAck when I was in school, 60 years ago, memorizing names and dates

was all that history class was about. If you could spit out the names and dates, you passed.

[coalition_unwilling]

117. I am so sorry. That regurgitation of trivia is so NOT what history (as

conceived by Herodotus and others moving forward) is.

You were cheated.

[Speck Tater]

118. The history I have always been interested in is...

...the daily life of ordinary people in any given historical era. I don't care what the kings and generals and presidents were doing. I care what the farmers and shoemakers were doing, and how they lived.

[coalition_unwilling]

120. In the 1960s, this type of history (known variously as 'Social History') became

more popular and gained a lot of adherents in the Academy over more traditional forms of political history (for the most part the history of elites).

A great example of this social history at its finest is E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class which came out in the early 60s, IIRC.

[RebelOne]

40. I have always wondered if there is an end to space.

Does it just go on and on? There has to be an end somewhere.

[cthulu2016]

41. Our space probably does no go on and on.

Space in our universe is not nothingness. It is a thing with physical properties and natural laws that was created in the big bang along with time and matter and energy.

So space, in our universe, is probably finite. It ends somewhere somehow, but I am unclear on the details.

And whatever is outside of space, if anything, is some other kind of "space" that can contain what we call space.

[JI7]

63. and once it ends if it ends are there many others like it outside of where it ends

interesting.

but i actually find it comforting that we are not so "important".

[Spike89]

43. More problems with the Fermi "paradox"

Aside from placing way too much importance on our personal time frame (in a 14 billion-year old universe, humans have been recording anything we can decipher for less than 100,000 years). In other words, we take a snapshot of an empty house and conclude that because it has no visitors, that there never have been any, nor will there be any. The time scale is absurd!

The real problem with the paradox is radio waves aren't the shining beacons we once believed. Current best thinking is that the most powerful radio waves we broadcast maintain coherence for about 40 light years, maximum. Most couldn't be received with any accuracy (or even be identified as man-made) outside a 10 light year distance. Now, throw in the incredibly tight time frame (we've been broadcasting for less than a century) and actively seeking extraterrestrial radio signals for mere decades.

Now, understand that in less than century after beginning our radio broadcasts, we've drastically cut back on the radio noise our planet gives off--directional radio, microwaves, fiber optics, lasers, etc. have all made us much more "quiet" even within the limited reach of possible radio reception. It is quite likely that we won't be randomly broadcasting radio waves in any detectable way within another century. Pulsed microwave, some "subspace technology"/quantum messaging we haven't mastered yet--we can't even imagine where we'll be in a century, much less assume what "everyone" uses to communicate across the galaxy.

In essence, in galactic scale, we've been "talking" in a whisper, in a corner of a shockingly loud room, for essentially no time and haven't even bothered to wait for a response, but even if we had, we'd have missed it because we don't even know what manner of communication everyone else is using.

[Alduin]

46. It's quite a treat to think about things like this.

No one can know what 14 billion is like, but for all intents and purposes, it may as well be infinite. That is really hard to comprehend. Since humans like to see things in order to understand things, it would be awesome to see what 14 billion looks like.

And somewhat related, with the vastness of the universe, and the space between solar systems, it's highly likely that there are many worlds with humans, or humanoids, on them. There's nothing lonlier than thinking we're alone.

[Tom Rinaldo]

47. I always take some comfort from Giordano Bruno who pointed out that...

In an infinite Universe, every point is its center. One could say Bruno was a bit ahead of his time, having lived between 1548 and 1600. He died a little prematurely; burnt at the stake by the Catholic Church for heresy.

More about him at wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_of_Nola

[Deep13]

51. I'm going to hide under my desk now. nt

[Uncle Joe]

52. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the post cthulu.

[cherokeeprogressive]

55. What WE think of as "The Universe" is just a tiny atom in the fingernail of a giant. n/t

[Zygoat]

88. .

[Canuckistanian]

56. One night when I was 9 years old

I was walking in the woods at night at a winter camp. And I shone my flashlight at a star.

And I thought, wow, for the rest of my life,the light from my little flashlight will be travelling to that star, which I knew would be more light years away than my life span.... I still think about it from time to time.

[JaneyVee]

58. K&R! The universe is estimated to have 200 Billion galaxies and growing.

Some even believe in Multiverse.

[RagAss]

67. ....Yet there are pea brains right here on earth.....

who have the audacity to believe that the Cosmos can be understood by a human mind.

[Arugula Latte]

69. But ... I want to meet Mister Wuggles!

Seriously, though, this is why I could never be religious. Time and the universe are infinitely bigger than the silly preoccupation with the last 2,000 years and a dead guy from Nazareth or a dead guy from Mecca.

[Zalatix]

70. Calling Morris-Thorne... Calling Morris-Thorne...

Morris-Thorne to the rescue! Or is that a no-go, too?

(Hint: Wormholes)

[cthulu2016]

84. Well, never say never

I have trouble with the idea of something stable enough for anything as complicated as an object making it through in one piece, but I can stretch my brain enough to imagine sending the equivalent of morse code through a wormhole.

Which would be the first faster than light information transfer we know of, and pretty impressive.

(As Einstein gamely noted, while losing the larger quantum physics debate, "quantum entangled" particles do something to their opposite particle at faster than light speed—Einstein's "spooky action at a distance"—but that effect cannot be used to convey information at faster than light speed.)

[rudycantfail]

74. Very cool OP thanks.

It does spawn an infinite number of tangents however.

[Zygoat]

77. is the universe conscious?

[cthulu2016]

85. If it is, it is on a very slow time scale

The consciousness of it would probably be unreadable from within it, in the same way somebody living in one neuron in our brain wouldn't know what we were thinking.

But the universe may well be a computer... and a computer can presumably be concious... so maybe the universe does "think," but probably in such a way that you would have to be able to see the whole thing and live for billions of years.

I'm not saying it does think. I am merely not excluding the idea. Maybe different universes "talk" to each other through whatever the heck is outside universes. But either way it wouldn't be very relevant to us.

[Zygoat]

86. or very fast

"in the same way somebody living in one neuron in our brain"

[ismnotwasm]

83. Fun stuff

My favorite of all the the possibilities of a 'multiverse' is the idea of an infinite universe, with finite information. In that case, the finite information has to be repeated and repeated and repeated with variances--etc. I like reading about it, (like in books from Brian Greene or Michio Kaku) but I can't really comprehend it.

This is a good read, using words and concepts someone like me can understand. Thank you

[Zygoat]

87. What?

"The same incredible bigness that suggests that almost anything that can exist in our universe's natural laws probably does exist also means we can never interact with those billions of other living worlds."

[cthulu2016]

89. Sure, though perhaps it could have been phrased better

The reason we can be pretty darn sure there are a great number of worlds with life out there is that the universe is so big that it has countless trillions of stars in it.

But because the universe is so big, most, and perhaps all, of those worlds are too far away for us to ever have knowledge of.

[littlemissmartypants]

90. It can't be any bigger than the notions here...

Try this on for size...http://www.democraticunderground.com/122810997

[coalition_unwilling]

100. Your magisterial post caused me to remember a quote from

Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (Ch. 7), told from the perspective of the then child-narrator Pip:

"And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude."

Not sure why your post brought that to mind, other than that the universe is basically indifferent to the fate of homo sapiens.

[VOX]

116. CD nails it again. Thanks for this. n/t

[VOX]

115. Every object in our known existence has an inside and an outside. Is the universe inside something?

Or outside something? Or both? Or neither? How many universes might there be? And what or who the hell assembled that ball of gas to prep the Big Bang? How many Big Bangs have there been or will be?

Terrific post -- AWE is my god, and contemplation of the universe delivers!

[DiverDave]

119. Or this:

[IMG][/IMG]