Is Stephen Hawking's on JUB ?

[D-Base]

Your right, it is really weird. First I start off thinking that it goes on forever, but then I think that it has to end somewhere, but then I think how in the world would the universe just end and then I just end up confusing myself...

I think it's more about perception than facts and data really.

if you want the universe to have an end then just imagine it does. But as I said, the definition of universe pretty much says it all : it's everything. So what is outside everything? It's nothing. This pretty clearly brings us back to the endless theory of the universe.

 

[Riverrick]

I used to lie on my roof as a kid and think about this stuff.....the idea of infinity......boggles my mind.

We will never know the answer to this question since we depend upon the laws of the universe to explore the universe. Thus we can only see as far as light travels in our lifetimes or in all of the combined lifetimes of man.

 

[Riverrick]

I wonder whether earth could be a TV show for some other distant Universe, like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show ? We can't see the edge of the Universe because its all done with mirrors They are all probably sitting back waiting for another world war to liven things up a bit.

Remember the idea that our planets are atoms in another universe? That would make us really, really tiny, maybe just a booger in someone's nose that they're about to blow at any moment.

 

[Andreus]

I was just sitting in the bath thinking about doing the vacuuming when the old 'what lies beyond the furthest star' chestnut cropped up. So what is beyond the universe ? Does it go on forever, or is it suspended in some sort of infinite nothingness ? Did the universe just 'arrive' ?
It's times like this I wish I had paid more attention at Sunday School.

well heres a few things to wrap your noodle around...

first

light travels at a specific rate, so when you look up in space, some of those little points of light are actually not stars, but entire galaxies that simply no longer exist... this is how astronomers learn about the past... the farther away an object is the farther back in time they are looking...

more clearly....when we see something a million light years away, we are seeing what it looked like a million years ago, not how it looks presently and it is very likely that those objects are long gone.

next.... if the string theorists are right, there are ten dimensions and we can only interact with four of them.

third.... with these things considered, the farthest back the scientists have been able to see is in the microwave band which still holds the heat from the microseconds following the big bang when there were only two elements in the universe... hydrogen and helium...

remember... anything heavier had to have been manufactured in a stars fusion process and thrown out during a nova process

fourth... hawkings has retracted his view that matter disapears from our universe into another one through the gravity wells of black stars and has renamed the energy that these black holes emanate hawking radiation. this makes his theories more compliant with einsteins

so it may be that there are more dimensions and as a result infinite universes that all occupy the same exact space

five... the universe did not expand in a traditional sense from one point during the big bang as most people think.... rather... it is expanding everywhere simultaneously as a result of that original expansion... like a loaf of bread rising with raisins in it.. so there is on edge... it is everywhere and it is expanding, just in a way that is hard for us to comprehend

lastly... it is believed that the human mind simply cannot truly conceive eternity or infinity... we can use the concept as a mathematical concept, but we cannot really grasp what it means

my best friend from college, we went to Boston university together, graduated from MIT with masters in both astronomy and physics recently and i spent a bit of time with him in athens a few weeks back (he went to MIT. i did not...lol. my degrees are not in science)

actually we talked more about quantum mechanics and string theories than any other scientific topic and i really understand that less now than before.... i only know that they believe that there are no particles ... just little loops and strings of energy that comprise sub atomic particles... which means we may not actually be made of anything at all and our comprehension of what matter is versus energy may be entirely incorrect....

i found it very confusing

hope that gives you something to chew on

boring what athenians talk about, eh?

 

[Irish Luck]

well heres a few things to wrap your noodle around...

first

light travels at a specific rate, so when you look up in space, some of those little points of light are actually not stars, but entire galaxies that simply no longer exist... this is how astronomers learn about the past... the farther away an object is the farther back in time they are looking...

more clearly....when we see something a million light years away, we are seeing what it looked like a million years ago, not how it looks presently and it is very likely that those objects are long gone.

next.... if the string theorists are right, there are ten dimensions and we can only interact with four of them.

third.... with these things considered, the farthest back the scientists have been able to see is in the microwave band which still holds the heat from the microseconds following the big bang when there were only two elements in the universe... hydrogen and helium...

remember... anything heavier had to have been manufactured in a stars fusion process and thrown out during a nova process

fourth... hawkings has retracted his view that matter disapears from our universe into another one through the gravity wells of black stars and has renamed the energy that these black holes emanate hawking radiation. this makes his theories more compliant with einsteins

so it may be that there are more dimensions and as a result infinite universes that all occupy the same exact space

five... the universe did not expand in a traditional sense from one point during the big bang as most people think.... rather... it is expanding everywhere simultaneously as a result of that original expansion... like a loaf of bread rising with raisins in it.. so there is on edge... it is everywhere and it is expanding, just in a way that is hard for us to comprehend

lastly... it is believed that the human mind simply cannot truly conceive eternity or infinity... we can use the concept as a mathematical concept, but we cannot really grasp what it means

my best friend from college, we went to Boston university together, graduated from MIT with masters in both astronomy and physics recently and i spent a bit of time with him in athens a few weeks back (he went to MIT. i did not...lol. my degrees are not in science)

actually we talked more about quantum mechanics and string theories than any other scientific topic and i really understand that less now than before.... i only know that they believe that there are no particles ... just little loops and strings of energy that comprise sub atomic particles... which means we may not actually be made of anything at all and our comprehension of what matter is versus energy may be entirely incorrect....

i found it very confusing

hope that gives you something to chew on

boring what athenians talk about, eh?

Wow...now my head it really starting to hurt...

 

[Andreus]

and i thought i was writing a clear and easy read

oooops

 

[tze100]

and i thought i was writing a clear and easy read

oooops

I think it was a clear and easy read.

While it is tempting to being thinking of everything as bits of string, string theory (of which there are many many different camps and, as such, many different versions) is only a mathematical model to explain the laws of physics. Even the term 'particle physics' is slightly misleading because it invites us to think of subatomic matter as hard balls which stick together with gluey particles. Essentially we are trying to create analogies for the mathematics by using easy to visualise models.

String theory is also quite a way off unifying gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces - which would create the Theory of Everything (showing that the forces are manifestations of one grand underlying principle). Many physicists are calling for an abandonment in research in this field.

I agree that it is impossible to truly comprehend things like 'edge of the universe' and 'infinity', but luckily we don't really have to.

 

[Andreus]

I think it was a clear and easy read.

While it is tempting to being thinking of everything as bits of string, string theory (of which there are many many different camps and, as such, many different versions) is only a mathematical model to explain the laws of physics. Even the term 'particle physics' is slightly misleading because it invites us to think of subatomic matter as hard balls which stick together with gluey particles. Essentially we are trying to create analogies for the mathematics by using easy to visualise models.

String theory is also quite a way off unifying gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces - which would create the Theory of Everything (showing that the forces are manifestations of one grand underlying principle). Many physicists are calling for an abandonment in research in this field.

I agree that it is impossible to truly comprehend things like 'edge of the universe' and 'infinity', but luckily we don't really have to.

i dont think that a grand unifying theory will ever be attained until gravity is reconsidered and redefined in a more realistic way.

string theory accepts too much current garbage, but i have a sense they are heading in the right direction