MadScientist

Well' date=' you either start your simulation with an intitial state, which includes a fixed set of rules that may or may not spawn rules of their own, or you simulate a universe with an expanding set of rules which are constrained by an "outer" set of rules defined along a time axis.

 

In the first instance, you will only find out what "could be". In the second instance you will find out very little that you didn't know already.[/quote']

 

We know the initial rules, they're the laws of physics aren't they?

I'm not sure I know what you mean by another layer of rules though, all I can think of is things like "Thou shalt not commit adultery" or something like that.

 

As for why they simulate out universe they might not want to learn anything. It might be the latest version of The Sims to them, or they're growing minds for their androids, or in their universe their laws of physics are different - gravity on their world is slightly weaker..

 

How about this then..

Their species which evolved far differently to our own, they wanted to know what a species would be like that evolved from primates or even a different kind of bacteria right at the dawn of evolution.

When the dinosaurs start taking over evolution they have to intervene with - "Chuck a huge brick at 'em. Make it just big enough to wipe the dinosaurs out but not those mammals."

 

People do say it takes an incredible number of circumstances for life to evolve on Earth.

A very interesting thread indeed. Starting to sound a bit like The Matrix though.

 

What about this:

This universe is just a game. During the game' date=' you can't remember anything about the real universe, or your real life. Then when you die, you log off and receive a score for the game. "Ok... You lived 106 years... You were a moderator at SFN... Got a Nobel prize... Twelve offspring... 163040 points." [/quote']

 

I was thinking about this but it complicated things too much, they'd have to be able to "jack in" to the system but the universe would need to run at their speed whilst they were playing. And it introduces problems like their home PC's would need to be able to handle all this processing and stuff like that.

I just thought it better to keep things simple.

 

There was one cool thing though, sleep. Maybe when we're asleep that's when they're out of the game for a while during their daytime.

 

That is getting a bit too Matrixey though.

I did say "universe" and not "scenario".

I know, but by simulated universe it could be any scale, from one single brain with the rest of the universe provided as information or many simulated brains or right up to every particle in our universe simulated.

Generally when we say "the universe" we aren't leaving out the time axis for a quick laugh.

Sorry, I don't get the point you're making...

Oh dear god.

LOL!!!!

Don't worry I'm not going mental, I know it's sci-fi, I don't think we will do all that but you've got to admit, if we could all get along that way the human race would evolve into something new.

Daniel F Galouye "Counterfeit World" 1964. A fairly effective treatment if I recall, correctly (Although that sub-routine may just have been inserted in my program.)

Yup, I've not read it but I've seen 13th Floor and The Matrix, maybe those are just inserted to reassure us that this universe being simulated is nothing but fantasy. It'd be the ideal way of convincing the AI's that they don't even need to think about any of this as they discover more about the universe..

According to every model of the universe we're all going to keep on evolving and develop new technology and migrate off this planet and...

All the physically provable evidence points to that and all the fantasy evidence points to that.

If I was growing AI minds in a "simulverse" and wanted them to evolve into nice minds for my androids. This universe would be absolutely perfect for the job..

They'd argue the toss over who or what created it but given enough diversionary information they'd get by.

They'd ocassionally argue about whether the universe was simulated or not too but they would always end up saying the same thing "There's nothing we can do about it so we might as well get on with it." If one of them goes insane thinking about it and takes its own life, well it's only an object in a computer program isn't it??

But what if some of them didn't just argue about it but went further and found out the truth.. I think I'll watch 13th Floor and Matrix again later.

This is nothing to do with the thread' date=' but surely if you are sophisticated enough to simulate a universe there will be very little you can learn from it?

 

ps - I am pretty sure we have done this topic [/quote']

 

There are probably thousands and thousands of AI researchers who would disagree with you there.

 

Say we had the robotic technology to make the movements and have all the necessary senses, the ony missing component would be the AI brain.

If you wanted it to have personality, the right kind of moral standards and the ability to learn wouldn't it be more efficient to have the brain evolving in a universe running at 100 or 500 times the speed of ours??

Then you just need to pick the brains when they ripen (die in our universe) look at their log and see if they fitted your profile for a "nice" android, if they did you stick them in one if they didn't you just reset their variables and stick them back in.

 

Now ask yourself how reincarnation would fit into this. What if those variables didn't get completely erased?? Sometimes some people or under certain circumstances (hypnosis) they could access those old variables or even the log file (because it would be attached or linked to their OOP object in the program) and recollect one of their previous lives..

In fact it would be made easier to do that because all our memories would be doing would be accessing our own log files. Under hypnosis maybe you can access your log file from further back, bypassing one of the rules of the program... Hey you guys up there!!! Yeah you!! I found a bug in your program!!!

 

Telepathy becomes a bug, two or more AI OOP people (we are the OOPies. ) make a connection they shouldn't and data is exchanged across a distance directly instead of using sound waves or visual information.

 

That's it isn't it??

We should be looking for bugs in their program!!!

So what else can be explained away as a bug in their program??

Ghosts, ESP, remote viewing.

Predictions of the future, maybe the computer program has routines for analysing what might happen next. Or even the people running the program might see the brains aren't evolving the right way, they rewind the program to an earlier state and alter something then let it run again from that point. So somewhere in the system is the thing they wanted to change, some guy called Nicodemus gets affected by a bug and can visualise in his AI mind the things they've changed, so he can only make vague descriptions. Where somone dreaming of a plane crash which happens gets a clearer picture because it wasn't too far in the future, the data the bug gave access to was easier to find and collect.

 

So another bug we could look for is, does matter have to be solid??

If that wall is only information sent to my simulated mind it's just the programs rules telling me I can't stick my hand through it. It's telling me when I reach my non existant hand out and try to pass it through it it doesn't let it. So they've got some neat collision detection routines in this program.

That would be a handy bug to find but if there is a bug in that bit of code how the hell would we find it??

 

Well we know hypnotic past life regressision involves entering a trance, we know people who predict the future usually do it in their dreams. Find the connection between those and the condition people are in when they see ghosts then you're onto something. The key to activating other bugs.

 

When you're hypnotised and told to regress to a past life you do.

When you're asleep and you're worrying about the flight you're going to make later or someone else is going to make, in other words you're told to look into the future, you do.

When you see a ghost, I dunno.. People usually see them at night, most people are tired at night, especially around midnight, they usually see them in old houses or something similar. So they're being told they're in this old house where people in the past have reported seeing ghosts, in this and other houses in the past. So you open the bug and see something you shouldn't..

 

Have you ever been drifting off to sleep and thought you heard something?? I have a couple of times, I was once convinced someone was in my room and said "Hello." was that a bug??

What if when I went to bed later and started drifting off to sleep thinking about all this a bug opened and something weird happened. I'd have found out that just thinking about a this was enough to do it.

 

And what about this??

When you close your eyes you can still picture things, those aren't coming from your senses. They're coming from your memory so the program knows how to present you with information from your past in that way.

 

 

That should get their attention. ;)

 

Imagine if they do see that and this post and our memories are erased or altered. We wouldn't know a damn thing about it.

But think about this, they don't have to because we know our universe is physically real, don't we??

 

So that's evidence for, which I find a little worrying so where's this abundance of evidence against it??

If this were a murder trial, right now I'd be saying guilty because the lack of evidence against is none existent as far as I can see anyway.

 

BTW I'm sorry if I'm scaring anyone.

You seem to be assuming that the simulation would be taking place within a computer within a Universe that followed the same laws' date=' had the same fundamental constants etc as this one. If our Universe were a simulation is it not more likely that the simulation was of conditions disimilar to that of the parent Universe?

[/quote']

 

Sorry Ophiolite but I did say this:

 

Other things like field of vision, if I were writing the program for this simulated brain I would limit the amount of data I needed to provide it with so it would keep the program running fast enough to be useful to me. There would be no point running a program if it took 3 days just to build up the information for a full sphere of vision around it so I would just create rules (laws of physics) that prevented that.

And to make the program run even more efficiently I would make rules to explain why the brain could only see things clearly in a narrow cone in that limited field of vision.

So when the brain looked away from a tree towards a house beside the tree I would only need to show the brain that tree at a simpler level so I would have more processing time to provide it an accurate model of the house. See what I mean??

 

In other words I would have to alter the laws of physics in the universe I was simulating.

I'd take away peripheral vision or reduce it by altering the way they evolved eyesight, so the computer didn't have to process as much data on vision leaving my program more CPU cycles for other things.

 

 

One thing that does get me going about this is the way energy seems to be the key in this universe of ours..

Energy and matter are interchangeable, e = mc2, the way a photon can behave as a wave of energy or a particle, you can't destroy energy, etc..

I kinda wonder what AI simulants in a universe we simulated would think when they looked closely enough at everything in their universe and found energy everywhere. Because in a universe running on a computer, everything would be energy.

 

And if I'm right we can never physically look at the smallest fundamental particle in the universe in a microscope of any kind. All we'll ever find is evidence that it was or is there. If I was writing this program that's one of the limitations I'd put in as a law of physics. So they would have a reason for that and carry on evolving instead seeing a fundamental and how it's just a piece of energy with variables and code attached to it (an OOProgramming object )

 

I would "inject" things into their development, I'd make a bush burn and vibrate so it gave off sound waves and give them guidelines to follow to evolve into a "nice" species.

I might try an experiment with different types of religions and see which evolves into the best.

Sorry if that offends but that's just what I'd do.

 

Does that make any sense??

 

Try and get your head around this one.

We are something that was created from nothing just like a simulated universe would be. And we are following the rules of a program. And if there's a chance we are just simulated beings doesn't that mean it's somethiing we should investigate??

Figuring out how black holes work and things like that, we're just figuring out how the program works. But they still need to be done in case they help uncover the truth..

 

 

Should we all look up and shout "We know we're simulated intelligences but please don't turn us off.. Talk to us.."??

 

I did think if we had telepathy we could disprove the theory but it wouldn't, it'd help disprove that I'm the only brain and you're all just data given to my brain. But not whether we're all simulated..

 

There MUST be some irrifutable evidence out there that proves we cannot be simulated intelligences. Otherwise it's pretty scary..

 

The scariest thing of all though is, if I'm the only really simulated intelligence in my universe none of you will be able to say "Yes, you are simulated." because as information providers for me you're not programmed to do that, you're programmed to keep me in doubt so I'll figure out something incredible on my own that the programmers want to use in their universe.

So I have to carry on regardless, taking the information the universe (you) are providing me with and processing it, so I can be ready to process the more advanced information you give me later.

The human mind improves with exercise so as I learn things my brain improves, that's something I'd make the simulated brain in my program do too.

I just hope they don't turn me off.

 

Of course things could be that way in a simulated universe with many properly simulated brains but it's scarier to be the only one, isn't it??

No. The comp needn't be that big either. Small sections of the program could be run at a time and time would only pass as fast as the program ran. Drat.

Yup, I know exactly what you mean.

They could run the program at whatever speed they liked, just pause one simulated mind (or even part of the mind) wait for the others to catch up then unpause what you paused.

But it doesn't go to prove whether or not we are in a simulated universe..

If you read the first post you'll see that this isn't about the existance of psychics.

But it's nice of you to prove that it's possible to fake being a psychic' date=' however it in no way disproves the fact that psychics [i']may[/i] exist and that this may be a result of evolution.

 

As for the main topic, I don't see why evolution would be in favour of psychic abilities at all, especially not until* we've matured as a race.

Perhaps people with extreme kinds of psychic abilities are too advanced for other parts of their brains so go insane.

 

here's a website I've had my eye on for a while but havn't been quite game enough to get into personally. It seems convincing though, and I consider myself a skeptic (not to be confused with disbeliever) of these kinds of things

 

*I use this word optimistically

A reason why we might be evolving into a species with telepathy is..

A solar system is born, planets form, life forms on it, those cells evolve into higher beings, then again and again until you get a life form that can think "Why are we here, are there others on these other planets, can we communicate with them?? No, the distances are too great."

"BUT WE WANT TO COMMUNICATE WITH THEM!!"

"And we WANT to communicate more efficiently with our own species."

The quickest way to relay some information from one brain to another over any distance would be telepathy.

Once life on a planet evolves telepathy it can reach out to the other life forms in the universe and communicate.

So then evolution is not a competition between different species on one planet it's on all planets..

So the way we evolved speech was only the first step in our evolutionary communication race.

We evolve speech, we find it's not fast enough to communicate ideas so we when we evolve enough to a certain tech level we invent the phone, then the internet but that has limitations, it always will have. So we need to evolve something new. It might be something we biologically evolve or technologically evolve but instant mind to mind communications is something that would benefit evolution.

And if you want something a bit deeper...

Take a look at the world around us, there are people in many different groups/classes who look down on other groups/classes. So they eventually some of them clash and we get horrifying acts of violence, thousands or millions getting killed in stupid futile wars over which group own which piece of land or who follows the right god.

If we were all telepathic anyone from one group would realise that one of their opponents from another group isn't actually a bad person after all, they think just like each other.

Telepathy would help the human race that way.

I believe that because, the groups who seem to think the western world is trying to destroy their way of life, we don't want to destroy their way of life but they want to fight us about it anyway so we have to retaliate. If they could see things from our perspective they'd understand that and just carry on with their lifestyles. Then they'd see the perspective of their neighbours...

What better way of seeing another mans perspective than actually being able to see his very thoughts??

If we don't evolve telepathy in some way we're (as a species) going to find it difficult to put an end to fighting and start to get along..

I truly believe that once we do start to get along some amazing things will start to happen to the human race.

If you were in a ship visiting an alien civilisation would you want to meet a species that behaved like ours does??

As a "higher being" looking at this primitive species you wouldn't think anything of abducting one, performing a few harmless experiments to see if they are evolving telepathy and therefore evolving into this species that got along, then putting them back on their planet to cause the least disturbance to their natural evolution.

Sorry for the length and going off topic.

Excellent attitude. There are no 'dumb questions'' date=' although the same can't always be said about the answers!

 

The only way I have ever really understood something was by explaining it to somebody else. Usually the first time I try I realise just how ignorant I am. Then the more I learn the more ignorant I become, because the scope of what I know I don't know enlarges. I try very hard, therefore, to become a little more ignorant every day!![img']http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/images/icons/icon7.gif[/img]

 

And Tycho, 100% agreement with your two opening paragraphs, and from the little I know about orbital dynamics the rest of the post was fine too. (But this is an area I'm not really ignorant enough about yet!)

Now that was COOL!!!

You should work that into a signature for yourself, "Help me become more ignorant by teaching me something new." or something like that.

I'm not certain if this is appropriate for these forums, I think it is though so...

Say our universe, the one we're in right now, is a simulation.

There are several levels it could being simulated:

1 - Just my brain and everything outside it is just information being provided to it.

2 - Several million brains being simulated on different computers with the ability to communicate as well as be provided information by the program.

3 - Everything in the universe is physically simulated.

To simulate things perfectly on any level you would have to simulate every single fundamental particle and these laws of physics applied to each one of them then set off to simulate that level of the universe.

Maybe there are more kinds but I'm sure you get the idea.

Whatever level you pick the computers they're running on need to be far more powerful than the universe they're simulating, we couldn't simulate a universe bigger than our own. The computers would need to be unbelievably large.

For us to simulate a human brain absolutely perfectly we would need to simulate every particle in a brain, our computers couldn't handle that so they would have to simplify things, instead of doing every single particle do every single cell, instead of our laws of physics (assuming we even knew them all) we would have to simplify those.

Then from that simulated brains perspective the smallest particle would have to be a cell (much like a quark is in our universe) and the laws of phsysics would have to be simpler. To provide it with information and feedback, when it looked at something another part of the program or another computer would have to provide it a simple representation of that thing. You might have to look at my examples below to see what I'm getting at here.

I was wondering what evidence there is out there to either prove or disprove that theory of the universe being simulated.

There needs to be an explanation for lag/delays.

Like the delay between looking at something and actually seeing it, if our brains or just my brain is being simulated, when I look at a car another part of the computer or another computer has to create that data and send it to my brain, there needs to be an explanation for the lag, which we call the speed of light. That has to remain constant so when we look at the sun it has to take 8 minutes to reach us.

That ties in with travelling somewhere, obviously the simulated brain can't physically move anywhere, the position in the 3D map in this virtual reality needs to be updated, in a video game there is a slight lag between pressing the forwards key and the character moving forwards.

So if our simulated brains invented space travel and we have to keep within the confines of information from light reaching our brains we have to travel slower too.

Other things like field of vision, if I were writing the program for this simulated brain I would limit the amount of data I needed to provide it with so it would keep the program running fast enough to be useful to me. There would be no point running a program if it took 3 days just to build up the information for a full sphere of vision around it so I would just create rules (laws of physics) that prevented that.

And to make the program run even more efficiently I would make rules to explain why the brain could only see things clearly in a narrow cone in that limited field of vision.

So when the brain looked away from a tree towards a house beside the tree I would only need to show the brain that tree at a simpler level so I would have more processing time to provide it an accurate model of the house. See what I mean??

Speed of light again, if I was simulating many brains I wouldn't want them to be able to reach these other planets or make contact with them, I would still want the other planets because I want these brains to develop as close to the level of my own as possible.

Distance sound travels, if I discovered I was limited to the number of brains I could have communicating at any one time, like if I could only have 1,000 brains being spoken to by another brain I would make it so sound could only ever travel 100 feet or something like that.

I suppose the question I'm really asking is there anything in the universe that proves irrefutably that we (or even just myself) aren't being simulated in a similar manner to this??

Because everything seems to be explainable by this model.

Even time dilation can be explained away, if one or more of these brains take off in a ship they're cut off from the rest, the computers their brains are running on can run more efficiently and outrun the other computer simulated brains. If I found that problem in the program I wrote I'd have to apply it to everything else, like an atomic clock flying on a plane, that would have to abide by the flaw too, so one of the brains would eventually figure it out as special relativity.

Sorry for the length and sorry if it's not suitable for these forums, just delete it if it is and I'll try somewhere else.

As a graphic designer' date=' I think i have a good perspective of this topic. When you start a new model, you have a big empty space. You can build this anywhere you could ever want. Space is not limited to where it stops or starts, but to how far we can go into it. Here are some other responses:

1.) Numbers are infinite. How is there a start and an end to them?

2.) If space ended somewhere, wouldn't there have to be something on the other side of it? You see, space is nothing, with something in it. Therefore it doesnt end. Nothing can't end... Because if it did... What would you be left with? Nothing.[/quote']

 

There are two kinds of infinite numbers though.

There's the usual 0 to inifinity.

Then there is an infinte range of numbers, you could spend the rest of eternity counting from 0 to any one of those numbers between 0 and infinity.

 

Who's to say there wasn't an infinite number of big bangs in the original nothingness, then the size of our universe is just a number between 0 to n and the numbers 0 to infinity represent the number of universes??

 

What happens when a universe reaches n in size?? N probably being determined by the amount of energy put into each individual big bang.

When/if the original energy from a univserses big bang dissipates there is no more energy to push space outwards.

 

There are other theories as an example - black holes sucking matter into other smaller universes, our universe was compresed into a really tiny space at the beginning and the size of the atom on the other side of the black hole doesn't matter. Take a 12" ruler and magically put it inside a black hole so it doesn't get destroyed and it no longer measures 12 inches but magically jump in there with the ruler and relative to yourself the ruler does measure 12 inches.

So there's no reason why we can't be "inside" one of these black holes in another universe. 0 to n is then the size of the universe in each black hole and 0 to infinity is the size of the parent universe.

Yes, that is a fair way to look at it.

Good, I'm catching up slowly.

You are almost correct. If we imagine a big bang with matter moving apart slower than 'c', you are right to start with: the light will travel more quickly and pass the matter, so that the light from the big bang would already be gone. But actually it is not like that because you have to wait a little while for the matter in the universe to become transparent to light. Initially we have just one big soup, and the photons will be absorbed and re-emitted continuously. Eventually the 'soup' will clump into galaxies with space between and the universe will become 'transparent' allowing light to travel freely. You may have noticed that in previous posts I have been careful not to say that the photons from furthest away are coming from the Big Bang...

Thanks for reminding me about the soup, I'd forgotten to take that into consideration. It was shown quite clearly in the documentary I watched just a few days ago too. :-/

So the actual photons of light/energy created by the big bang have all been absorbed and emitted many times since their creation, recycling the energy and the process is still ongoing, right??

When you say we have to wait for the matter in the universe to become transparent to light, I assume that includes other forms of wave energy too, is that correct??

After a little bit of time, these galaxies are far enough away that your problem does not occur. But eben if it did, many cosmolgists beleive the universe underwent a period of 'inflation' where the universe grew incredibly quickly (faster than 'c', but not violating special relativity since it is space-time itself stretching faster than 'c', so allowing no information flow). Then galaxies which are far away would move outside out light cone anyway...

Got that, also mentioned in the same documentary I watched and seen references to in other places.

Out of curiosity - is the inflation theory already established as being correct or are people finding holes in it??

WMAP is not measuring the shape of the galaxy as such, but using physical measurements and laws to deduce it. For example, if there were a lot of mass, the gravitational attraction would pull space-time back in on itself, making the universe closed. They have measured the mass (locally, or in other words, measured the density), and found that there is not enough to do this, so they deduce that the universe is open, etc. What circumstance could possibly result in the universe being a cube?

Ahhhh... A new piece I can put into my jigsaw puzzle.

The universe would act like a huge black hole, enough mass to generate enough gravity to pull even light and everything else in. Its event horizon would be the edge of the universe, right??

Sorry about mentioning the cube, I meant it as an example of another shape the universe could be. I realise my mistake now, energy would be thrown out in all directions with the same amount of force. Whoops, things just got foggy again...

In my visualisation of how things happened the big bang threw out energy in all directions at the same time, something like the outer casing of a grenade, I see that outer casing of energy as being space. As that energy wave travels outwards it pushes out the boundaries of our space.

Or is space-time just something else the BB threw out along with everything else??

That would seem to make more sense to me now. Because space-time grows outwards, the fundamental particles form the soup and the electromagnetic energy is trapped in the soup bouncing around. As that matter is spread out the gaps between each particle lessens the amount of heat transference from particle to particle - the matter cools. Another contributing factor to the cooling is the EM waves can escape through the now wider gaps in the particles. Basically the energy in the particles is lowered because it's now allowed to roam freely between the gaps, there is more energy travelling through space than stored in particles...

I had this vision that if you could magically escape the universe and look at it you would see a large sphere of EM wave energy from the big bang, I'll cross my fingers and say "That's nonsense." isn't it??

If any of that's correct and space-time isn't EM energy pushing the universe outwards, does that mean ST can be travelling at a different speed??

It would have to have a variable speed to allow for inflation wouldn't it??

Perhaps I should have done some more scouting about on the net to see how the new jigsaw piece fits in with things I didn't understand before.

This should now be clear from my earlier comments....

Let's find out...

The microwaves WMAP is picking up aren't the ones from the big bang.

Each microwave WMAP receives has been travelling towards us for a very long time without being absorbed and emitted again.

The dark patches (if those are the denser areas of matter) they're the areas where the microwaves were absorbed by matter, right??

The lighter areas would obviously be the microwaves travelling unimpeded.

Yet there are other bodies within that sphere of WMAPS visibilty that emit microwaves, the way I'd have to explain why those aren't on the map is that the older microwaves from further away would have more energy stored in them, WMAP then filters out microwaves from the sun by ignoring low energy microwaves. Would that be correct??

BTW thanks for taking the time to explain all this, much appreciated.

I sometimes feel like a caveman looking at the stars when I read some of this stuff on the net.

I think I just realised something you all take for granted.

Electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light and EM waves were/are the energy given out by the big bang, so the universe must be expanding at the speed of light.

Matter can't travel at the speed of light so no matter will ever reach the edge of the universe, so that's my previous idea of tachyons being matter bouncing off the edge of the univere with more energy than the speed of light out the window, faster than the speed of light.

Is that why we'll never be able to see the edge of the universe, because there can never be anything that far out for us to see??

There is no centre of the universe. Why would there be?

 

The only assumption which goes into the astrophysical experiments is that we are not in an exceptional part of the universe. That all the other bits of the universe that we can't see (because they are outside our lightcone) are much the same as the stuff we can see. This is completely akin to the assumption that the parts of the universe that we cannot see have the same physical laws as the bits we do see - an assumption which you seem happy with. So why do you have a problem with one assumtion but not the other?

This "no centre of the universe" used to do my head in, there was a big bang, all explosions have a central point.

BUT I think I've cleared it up in my mind now...

For the time before the big bang the universe was compressed into it's miniscule size so the big bang happened all over the universe at the same time. Is that the right way to look at it??

I watched a documentary recently that mentioned WMAP and showed the photo/map...

I don't understand which microwaves it's picking up.

The m/waves that went out from the sphere (radius = distance we can see) in that miniscule universe have travelled away now so the m/waves WMAP's picking up must be the ones still travelling from other spots in that miniscule universe, is that right??

How can it be right because with the universe being so small in its early days it wouldn't have taken EM waves long to travel right across the universe. Was the speed of light slower then??

And I think that's what yourdadonapogo meant by us being at the centre of this sphere, distance we can see. So if all we can see is that sphere of microwaves that haven't reached our part of the universe yet how does it tell us the shape of it?? If it was a cube, we'd still only be able to see X lightyears away in any direction, wouldn't we??

The other thing was the dark patches represented areas where matter must have been denser, so gravity could take effect and build up bigger masses.

But how do they get to that conclusion?

If these microwaves are travelling from X lightyears away wouldn't they be absorbed by other bodies in the universe before they reached us leaving darker regions??

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/mr_whatsthat.html

To use their own analogy of light passing through clouds, the clouds absorb some of the light waves.

I don't know if this is of any use:

http://www.rit.edu/~jmwsma/calculators/ti92/ti92links/ti92links.html

How about just going back to the little tidepool life started in 3 billion years ago and taking a huge dump in it? You think that would change things at all?

LOL!!

Personally I think the question should be "Should we even want to go back in time??"

AFAIK The only way we can actually find out if it's safe to go back in time and alter things is to actually do it. And when you think that just standing on a twig and breaking it could not only cause you to cease to exist but everyone you know, it's a bit of a gamble.

Even just materalising in the past will have catastrophic effects on the original timeline. All those molecules you're going to displace are going to cause more of a breeze than a butterfly flapping its wings, just think of the storm you'll kick up on the other side of the planet.

And how would those molecules be moved out of the way to make room??

And most people seem to miss the point that we don't know if our future selves already have gone to our current past to change things.

We could be living in a time line where they messed something up and Hitler and his gang of merry men went rampaging throughout the world on a killing spree.

If they/we did mess things up like that we have to wait until we discover time travel again and go back to fix it. Because when they messed things up they wiped themselves out and couldn't go back to the future or send someone else back. If the two world wars hadn't happened the world and the people alive in it would be very different today and even more different tomorrow.

And if we do go back and fix that mess we might wipe ourselves out, we'd save most of the people from suffering in concentration camps in the past, which would be nice but at what price??

I'd rather no one went back in time, if any of you do and you wipe me from existence I'll be pretty damned cross with you!!

I don't believe in parallel universes BTW.

A comet smashes into our planet and wipes all of humanity out. When the dinosaurs got wiped out small mammals survived which we evolved from.

So the same thing happens again and a new intelligent species evolves on Earth.

I was just wondering what are the chances of that happening??

Because I was thinking of the implications. Our archeologists get exited about finding a new species of dinosaur or something like that.

Imagine what the archeologists of the new intelligent life will be digging up.

It'll be millions of years into the future but surely some evidence of us will survive, won't it??

Our descendants might get off this rock and their descendants come back saying "We used to live here."

Or will the sun or some similar catastrophy have destroyed the Earth before then??

And just for a laugh...

We'd better make sure KFC don't branch out into space research and become so succesful they buy out NASA and other agencies cos if the next intelligent life to evolve on Earth after a comet hitting it are chicken people, they're gonna be well screwed.

I think extraterrestrials have already visisted the earth millions of years ago and they continue to stop by in the form of alien microbes embeded in rocks and particles. These microbes are the building blocks for life on earth.

I thought things worked like this...

Stars that go supernova form a few basic elements which go on to form more stable stars like our own which form all the elements, like carbon, etc..

Do we know enough to say the elements we know of today are the only ones that could exist anywhere??

I don't see what importance microbes arriving on comets makes to anything.

On day one all life in the universe was part of the same soup anyway.

If you trace evolution further back than the first amino acids, all life really is is just something that gets made by stars, stars just get made in star factories which just get made by something else..

And aliens then are really just really distant ancestors of ours.

Something that interests me about ET's though is how we might act as ET's ourselves when approaching a new planet with intelligent life on it.

Things like..

We wouldn't want to get to know them if they were hostile because we wouldn't want them flying around the universe in ships like ours but with hostile intentions.

If they were more primitive than us we wouldn't want to disturb their development too much. Leaving clues like zipping down to the atmosphere might be an idea though. I won't mention genetically engineering a human to become like one of them and performing spectacular feats using advanced technology like walking on water or anything like that.

If the universe is 13.7 billion years old or even older and life on Earth's only been evolving for the past 5 billion there could be species out there a good few million years further ahead than we are.

If in 1 million years time we come across a planet with intelligent life equal to our own as it is now, from our perspective then they'll seem like apes to us now. Abducting a few of those to examine them then putting them back wouldn't bother us much. We'd know from our own history that no one would believe them anyway. In actual fact we'd be doing them a favour, think of all the great films they could start making about these so called aliens.

And because of all that I don't think aliens will introduce themselves properly until the whole planet sorts itself out.

We need to stop fighting and start helping each other out. Instead of spending billions on warfare develop technology for turning sea water into drinkable water. Or bung it all into medical research or the space program.

We need to stop thinking of ourselves as English, French, African, Chinese, American, etc.. or black, white, yellow etc... and start thinking of ourselves as humans.

But that means some extremely radical changes like throwing all the religions out and creating a new one.

Rascism will only die out when all the races have interbred so much that there's only one race left.

I don't expect ET to come knocking any day soon.

Unless they can monitor our internet and pick all us good guys up.

The way I see things...

The universe is now aged at 13.7 billion years isn't it now??

But the universe is too big to have grown this much in that time, then they introduced this "inflation stage" of development and everything fitted into place again. Back then it could expand quicker than it does now.

What's outside the universe?? I LOVE this one!!

You can't say there is a void or just nothing outside our universe. Because even nothing not even a void could exist outside it.

So to be accurate you've got to say, there's nothing at all not even nothing outside out universe, haven't you??

What if there was a galaxy right on the edge of the universe??

I think if I was on a planet in that galaxy I'd be packing my bags and legging it as far away as possible. So maybe we'll find out about the edge of the universe when the fleet of alien ships come whizzing by, stopping to tell us we're going the wrong way.

Another theory I have is that any particles trying to become a part of this nothing that's not even nothing, will be repelled with more force than it went in with.

But I mentioned that in another thread about tachyons.

some people actually do have "psychic abilities." my friend can read minds. he isn't like a money grubbing tv "psychic", he tries to hide it most of the time. he can walk into a room and know what everyone is thinking. it is kinda wierd.

Why should it be limited by distance??

As for us evolving esoteric abilities.

I was reading a very little about quantum conscioussnes, where the brain works at the quantum level. Which makes sense to me (ATM anyway) since we used to perceive ourselves as just the human body, then a brain in the human body, then since part of the brain is for memory, part is for sight etc, we become the part/s of the brain that does the thinking. Then it goes down to the cellular level so why can't it continue down to the atomic level and onto the quantum level??

My theory is that at the atomic level the behaviour of the atoms influence our thoughts. QC working in the same way at the lowest level.

What other things like entangled particles are we going to discover in the future?? What role do neutrinos, tachyons (don't shoot me!! ) and these dark matters and negative energies I've heard talk of play in our brains??

And if the string theorists are right..

Could the strings do even more incredible things like talk to each other or influence each other in other ways, allowing them to pass information or making them move.

And wasn't it Einstein who said energy and matter are interchangable??

Why can't we, as a collection of strings that can talk to each other, tell our strings to all convert to energy but maintain the quantum consciossnes and ascend into energy beings??

Maybe that's getting a little too crazy though.

Sorry the exoskeleton of an ant that size would not support its weight, Also they aren't that good as swimming.

God, I can't believe I'm answering this whilst sober.

Obviously they'd hitch rides on ships and birds.

It's the thinking part that I can't grasp, we know giant insects couldn't exist and to outsmart us they'd need better brains bigger than they have right now.

So they'd have to be telepathic and have a hive type mind where every single ant not only knew what the others were thinking but could influence them. So instead of having the brain in one ant it would be in them all.

Perhaps then they could all work together and invent helicopters, fighter jets, aircraft carriers or just raid our military bases and steal all our tackle.

"Lot of ants tonight John.."

"Yeah, I just hope it's not another bloody invasion force. Those ant sized machine guns don't half sting the morning afterwards."

Up until recently I believed that photons were charged electrons but as I now understand things..

Photons are those packets of energy emitted by atoms when an electron is thrown from one to another, the atom can't contain the new electrons energy so it throws the energy out, is that correct??

What happens to the electron though??

Surely it can't just disappear, it must also be thrown out or absorbed mustn't it??

And if that's right, another thing I believed was that the photon (charged electron) was passed from one atom to another, like a chain reaction. I assume "real" photons don't travel in this way at all, correct??

All I can find on the web is that photons travel as waves, that's great but means nothing to me.

I can understand an atom absorbing a photon, the atom takes that packet of energy and absorbs it in some way transforming it to heat. Does the electron gather more speed causing the atom to vibrate more violently which then spreads to neighbouring atoms, allowing the original atom to slow down slightly. Eventually leaving the original body and entering the air the atoms of which in turn vibrate more violently...

A reflected photon would be flung out some way. How does that work, all I can picture is the electron catching it but that kind of atom doesn't like that kind of energy so it throws it back out.

What happens when a photon passes through an atom that doesn't absorb it or reflect it?? Does it get absorbed and thrown out or is it more like reflection and instead of being held onto for a full orbit of the electron it's only held onto for half an orbit??

And what happens when photons collide?? I assume they absorb each other and form a new photon with more energy.

I'm pretty certain that photons of different wavelengths just pass straight through each other, correct??

If I'm understanding things, photons don't have to be light we see, this one's confusing me.. Radiation given of by uranium or something like that is just photons of a kind we can't see, correct??

Does that mean that a radio transmitter is emitting photons we can't see but a radio receiver can "see" them??

Radio telescopes are just gathering photons from distant bodies, right??

And photons travel in straight line.

And to focus on a distant body the telescope has to concentrate on the photons it's emitting, in other words filter out all the photons coming into the telescope from other sources, right??

If so, why are they so wide? Wouldn't it be better to have a really long tube radio telescope instead of a dish and point that at the object

Taken to the extreme a tubular telescope only a photon wide would only collect the photons coming directly from the body it was pointed at, wouldn't it??

And while I'm on the subject of photons, I was reading something more on entangled photons. From what I read they're created by passing light through a certain kind of crystal. That sent my mind racing and I came up with a theoretical invention...

Fire the beam of light through the crystal to constantly create entangled photons, for each pair send one off to a distant star and keep the other one trapped between two mirrors. I suppose their surfaces would have to be made from extremely reflective atoms, otherwise over the next 50 to 200 years the photon that stayed at home would dissipate in some way. Perhaps a long fibre optic cable of some kind so you could have a stream of photons constantly travelling in a loop...

I was thinking "they" could have been sending photons out and keeping the others to monitor them. An elaborate way of sending a message.

And if the receiver trapped these photons some way a direct link to the sender would be achieved.

But it would mean having to overcome the link breaking when interacting with those photons. Could that ever be overcome??

I'm sorry for all the questions but whenever I look at these kind of things on the web, they seem to be assuming I know things about other things, like the "photons travel as waves" as an example I used above.

Anyone know of any sites that can take you through the learning process from start to finish?? I'm 36 years old and don't remember Einstein or photons or most of this stuff being mentioned once in school by the teachers, maybe I was off that day.

']Madscientest' date=' excellent post (the first one)

 

Now, you're wrong, but thats ok. Way to many people come in here saying that relativity is wrong, and that they seem to know everything and that anyone who doesn't agree with them is clearly a moron. You come in and ask an intelligent well thought out question, and are humble about it to boot. Good for you.

 

I wont go into too much detail (since I dont know much). But galaxies and solar systems are generally flat because they rotate, not because gravity is stronger at one point. A solar nebula for example might start out with a slight rotation. As it colapses in on itself, that rotation will speed up to conserve angular momentum. The nebula will have a rotation in one direction slightly larger than in another direction, and this will be the direction of rotation of the system. Other particles will be moving in the opposite direction, and coming down on top of and from blow the disk. As these parcticles hit the (more plentiful) particles already roatating in one direction, they will tend to do the same. The end result is a mostly flat disk of matter spinning in the same direction. When the star at the center is born, the matter will already be spinning in this direction. When the planets around it form, they will already be orbiting in the same direction. There are exceptions of course, caused by collisions or objects that enter the system after its formation. For example pluto orbits above and below the plane of the eleptic, and it isn't going to change this orbit any time soon. You can orbit the sun at any direction and gravity will be equal no matter how you do it.

 

...I ended up going into detail, even though I'm not too sure about some of this. Someone should give this a look over to see if there are any errors. (good chance there are).[/quote']

 

Thanks!!

I'm glad you did go into detail cos I can visualise what you mean and it sounds fine to me.

I should have done some research into how gravity works on the net first.

 

 

And I don't mind being wrong in the slightest, I just hope the people on here don't get too fed up with correcting my mistakes all the time.

Which in my opinion they shouldn't, explaining something to someone (even more than once) helps them by reinforcing the facts in their minds. Practice makes perfect, building up those connections in their minds and all that.

 

So I'll go and look for a forum to ask questions about photons now.

If the Big Bang happens more than once and universal expansion/contraction is cyclical' date=' than perhaps the cycle is infinite and therefore, the tachyons could continue to travel back in time. For us to detect such a (particle?) wouldn't some other source than the Big Bang be responsible for the tachyons as our timeline is the furthest point in the future for every nanosecond that passes.

 

Who knows, perhaps ours is not the only universe and tachyons are not native to ours. A Black Hole does not capture everything. Maybe tachyons exist and are uneffected by events such as the Big Bang.

 

Just some thoughts over my morning cup of java. Thanks for the thread, gave my mind a kickstart this morning.[/quote']

 

Glad you liked it, your reply had me foxed for a while but I think I've reasoned it out.

 

If I'm right (this is just a theory Swan and tachyons are created by the fundamental particles hitting the edge of the universe and getting rebounded back in with more energy as tachyons.

They wouldn't be able to exist outside the confines of the universe and if they were travelling back through time to the big bang they would be contained in the really small universe at that time. They would have to be compressed and somehow revert back to fundamentals with their initial energy and their new extra energy being released at the same time.

 

The pressure from the edge of the galaxy bouncing them back in and the pressure from the compressed universe throwing them out.

 

Whether it's a viable theory or not, I still like it.

 

The idea of them coming from another universe is pretty cool too.

The way I see that working is both universes would be swapping particles each cycle. Theirs starts off in reverse and ours starts off in forwards..

 

 

Whilst on the subject of the big bang is there evidence to prove there wasn't more than one explosion?? Could there have been several over the universes life??

Either inside the same universe or creating many smaller ones which have combined over time and possibly still are doing.

Or would the microwave map from WMAP have discovered them??