Infinity and the big bang

sigma said:
I still can't quite grasp it... imaginary time?

How can all of this matter spring to life from literally nothing? :confused: :(
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It cannot as the is no time.

Try your hardest to think about nothing for 10 minutes. It cannot be done as you are thinking about thinking about nothing. :eek:

I go with the bubble theory and multiverse myself. ;)
 
DampDog said:
This is worth watching.
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that looks like quite a nice series, thanks for sharing :)

itchy said:
Try your hardest to think about nothing for 10 minutes. It cannot be done as you are thinking about thinking about nothing. :eek:
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s0xNNS1.jpg
 
the_chicco said:
Do you know what saddens me the most. That I always have the underlying feeling of being born in the wrong time / era. Look at what we've achieved in 100 years, I can only imagine what we find out, discover and learn in the next 1000 or 2 (if we haven't blown ourselves up of course).
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Yup, we might be one of the last few generations for whom death (at least at he end of a regular human lifespan as we know it now) is something to worry about.

There is a term used in poker tournaments: the "bubble boy" - that's the last person to get knocked out of the tournament before the prizes start getting awarded... everyone after the bubble boy is at least getting their initial stake back...

We've had all those millions of years of evolution, technology has exploded over the last century, we could potentially significantly expand our lifespans in the next few generations or even start to cheat death/regenerate our bodies/upload ourselves etc.. etc.. Yet in the grand scheme of things, most of us who are alive now have perhaps been born just a bit too soon... of all the thousands and thousands of generations of humans we're the ****ing "bubble boys" of life.
 
sigma said:
I still can't quite grasp it... imaginary time?

How can all of this matter spring to life from literally nothing? :confused: :(
Click to expand...

I think the guts of it is the idea that time is part of the universe. If time is part of the universe, then time and the universe never existed seperately - there wasn't any time before the universe, the universe has existed for all time, the universe never didn't exist. So the universe didn't spring into existence from literally nothing - the universe has always existed.

But while I can express the thought, I don't really grasp it. What is no time? We're creatures of time, it's hardwired into us and every experience we have. A happens, then B happens. Things happen. There isn't an untime of nonhappenings. We don't even have words to talk about it. We're also creatures of causality - X causes Y, that's how things work. Even when we don't know what the cause is, we know there is one. So how do we think about non-causal non-events in non-time? Maybe some theoretical physicists can do it using maths as a language, but not the rest of us. Or maybe not, since as far as I know all the theories and solid hypotheses are about the development of the universe over time.
 
sigma said:
I still can't quite grasp it... imaginary time?
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To be fair, we are in an area of science where the physical world we thought we understood starts to melt away. Quantum entanglement is another facet of all this that is just beyond strange.
 
the_chicco said:
Do you know what saddens me the most. That I always have the underlying feeling of being born in the wrong time / era. Look at what we've achieved in 100 years, I can only imagine what we find out, discover and learn in the next 1000 or 2 (if we haven't blown ourselves up of course).
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i liked [kinda...cos it's sad but true, to quote a song] a quote i saw somewhere - we're born 100 years too late to explore the planet, and 100 years too early to explore space.
 
wolfie138 said:
i liked [kinda...cos it's sad but true, to quote a song] a quote i saw somewhere - we're born 100 years too late to explore the planet, and 100 years too early to explore space.
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people will look back at us and think "those poor guys stuck on that 1 planet"

it's a shame that it will take another 150 million years for the milky way to rotate so we can see what the great attracter really is... by that time I'd imagine we'll be gone or left the planet
 
Angilion said:
I think the guts of it is the idea that time is part of the universe. If time is part of the universe, then time and the universe never existed seperately - there wasn't any time before the universe, the universe has existed for all time, the universe never didn't exist. So the universe didn't spring into existence from literally nothing - the universe has always existed.

But while I can express the thought, I don't really grasp it. What is no time? We're creatures of time, it's hardwired into us and every experience we have. A happens, then B happens. Things happen. There isn't an untime of nonhappenings. We don't even have words to talk about it. We're also creatures of causality - X causes Y, that's how things work. Even when we don't know what the cause is, we know there is one. So how do we think about non-causal non-events in non-time? Maybe some theoretical physicists can do it using maths as a language, but not the rest of us. Or maybe not, since as far as I know all the theories and solid hypotheses are about the development of the universe over time.
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My kind of hazy assumption is everything, until observed, exists in a 4th dimensional like state that only defines the bounds of possibility/potential (like the whole Schrödinger's cat thing) which is more a description of the possibilities than anything else until you add in an observer and hence frame of reference (time) at which point you get a 3D projection of a 4D construct. Which also means every possibility doesn't actually exist but there could be a number of parallel (not necessarily even close) realities.
 
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Is it not beyond the realms of possible theory that our universe only came into existence the moment that it was observed by something external to what could ever be part of our universe? Much like Schrodinger's spider.
 
rubberduck said:
Is it not beyond the realms of possible theory that our universe only came into existence the moment that it was observed by something external to what could ever be part of our universe? Much like Schrodinger's spider.
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Erm...yes, I think. Although I've never heard of Schroedinger's spider. As an aside, it's a bit odd that Schroedinger is the person most associated with the idea when he was arguing that the idea was ridiculous and wrong. That was the point of his famous thought experiment with the cat - it was a reductio ad absurdum argument to disprove an interpretation (Copenhagen interpretation) of quantum theory. It appears he was wrong and the universe really is that weird on a fundamental level. Although not for cats - they're too big.

Which means I'm not sure it is within the realms of possible theory. As far as I know, the idea of superposition only applies on an extremely small scale.

I'm way over my head here.
 
Schrodinger's thought experiment is often misunderstood anyhow - it isn't just about not knowing until you look but about the mechanics of quantum superposition.
 
sigma said:
As far as I know, the idea of superposition only applies on an extremely small scale.
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Its a numbers game the majority averages out to a mean value and then classical physics applies. Thats not to say superposition is impossible on a large scale its just extremely unlikely that every single particle will find itself itself in the same state. Its like having a thousand rubber ducks floating on a lake and every single one randomly aligns itself in exactly the same direction. Its not impossible its just highly unlikely or in this case incredibly (to the nth degree) unlikely.
 
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