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Our planet is among the first of many, many Earths.


tar

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Gator,

 

While I also am simple enough to not be able to grasp the concept of infinity I find your name calling of Strange and Ophiolite quite unbased, and quite ridiculous.

 

You, for instance, as Geordief just noted, cannot know the things you say you know. If such was as obvious as you claim it to be, then it would be obvious to everybody looking at it, and thinking about it. To some, there can be no other way but that there is an infinite God. To others the place just happened 13.8 billion years ago, and time came into existence along with the matter that moves around over it..

 

We are well insulated, by space and time from the totality of the universe, and from its beginnings and from its end. Whether or not the universe required conditions to come into being, that were "present" "before" the Big Bang is something that would be hard to get a good handle on.

 

If space and time are infinite, then, as well, God should have a mother and father, or something to come from, some precondition, some container, some boundry upon which to judge his/her/its extent.

 

So, when you say the universe is infinite, what do you base that on? Infinite, compared to what? Are you talking about the cosmos, or existence or some condition that is present, or was present, prior and around the universe, that gave the universe a stage upon which to play? What is this obvious logical thing that must have always been the case, everywhere, and forever?

 

Regards, TAR

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tar - thanks for your reasonable response.

 

Here is my position on God - Religion is early man's attempt to explain life. When there was an earthquake or lightning he didn't have the understanding of all the natural forces around him, so he created the concept of God to make sense of these forces, and religions grew from this.

 

I think many of you cant break away from the idea of a beginning. Your life, the earth, our solar system all had a beginning. And 13.8 billion years may seem like a long time, but compared to the Universe that's just a moment. Because the Universe had no beginning - it has always been here. That's a basic truth that all men need to understand to put their existence into perspective.

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Robittybob - No. Remember space and time are both infinite. The matter that is here has always been here - but always changing. There was no beginning point.


Strange - im done with you - go out to your yard and play with your imaginary unicorns.

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Robittybob - No. Remember space and time are both infinite. The matter that is here has always been here - but always changing. There was no beginning point.

Strange - im done with you - go out to your yard and play with your imaginary unicorns.

Even if you think it was always here, it hasn't always been in the same place, so did the matter of the Universe at some stage go through a Big Bang type event?

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Rob - Space has always been here, matter has always been here. I suspect that a Big Bang is just an event that happens in the normal cycle of expansion and collapse of matter. Im guessing it happens here approx. every 100 billion years.

Remember both space and time are infinite so there have probably been an infinite number of "Big Bang" type of events throughout the universe.

Edited by Gater
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Rob - Space has always been here, matter has always been here. I suspect that a Big Bang is just an event that happens in the normal cycle of expansion and collapse of matter. Im guessing it happens here approx. every 100 billion years.

Remember both space and time are infinite so there have probably been an infinite number of "Big Bang" type of events throughout the universe.

Sounds a bit like a multiverse that shares the same space.

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No - there seems to be a lot of confusion with the term Universe. The Universe is all empty and occupied space forever in every direction.

 

The "known" or "observable" universe is a 30 billion light year sphere that we are in the center of.

 

Some speak of this sphere as universe because we cant see beyond it.

 

When scientists say that the universe started with the big bang what they really mean is that the "known universe" started with the big bang.

 

My point is - and there reason I joined this discussion - is to point out that since time and space are infinite, and since it happened here, there probably has been an infinite number of "big bangs" through out the universe and an infinite number of worlds with all stages of evolution.

 

I think the reason that this concept is not accepted as common knowledge is the fact that many cant quite grasp the concept of infinity.

 

Most people think that all things have a beginning and a ending. Most things do - but not time and space.

Edited by Gater
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Actually I was thinking something similar earlier last month after watching a documentary about the big bang.. I was thinking that our 'universe' as we define it could be one of many in the greater expanse that encompases everything. I was wondering if there had been far away big bangs that we will never know about and wondered if there could be more to come that are just so far away we wouldn't ever interact with.....

 

Not being an expert in this (I only have a degree physics/chemistry and a PhD in Chemistry, so am not qualified as an expert in astrophysics) I was going to ask if this was a feasible.

 

So Gater - although I see where you are coming from - there is no way you can KNOW this surely? If so then please show it. I would imagine though that this is just speculation - just saying it is obvious will not cut it.

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Gator and DrP,

 

I remember quite vividly one night as a 13 year old, when I considered infinity. In both directions. I envisioned the cosmos as a place that contained universes of galaxies, much in the same manner as entities on our scale, contain organs and cells and molecules and atoms and electrons. That is where I got the idea of being insulated from the happenings at different scales, by being at this particular size. This particular size that we all, as human beings on Earth, are accustom to.,

To this, the entertainment of concepts of what is going on on very tiny scale and what is going on at very large scale, must be taken with a grain of salt. That is, what is useful on one scale is meaningless, or approaches meaninglessness on another, and what is trivial on one scale, could be catastrophic on another, and some scales are separated by so much, as an event on one scale is not pertinent to events on another.

Consider the ending scene in one of the Men in Black movies, where an entire galaxy was in a charm on a cat’s collar earlier in the movie, and at the end we zoom out and see that our local group of galaxies are just molecules on a ball in the sport of some odd creatures…some many (insulating) scales up.

To this, Gator, you cannot say that others do not entertain thoughts of infinity, or that they do not get it. We all get it. What you have to give in on though is the thought that you get it, and nobody else does.

We are all, after all equally insulated from things rather tiny and things rather huge.

None of us can claim to be in possession of a totality of understanding of the situation.

 

Regards, TAR

 

 

 

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Actually I was thinking something similar earlier last month after watching a documentary about the big bang.. I was thinking that our 'universe' as we define it could be one of many in the greater expanse that encompases everything. I was wondering if there had been far away big bangs that we will never know about and wondered if there could be more to come that are just so far away we wouldn't ever interact with.....

 

There are a whole class of models like this. I have even heard mention of the idea that this continual process could allow the laws of physics to have "evolved" (thus solving the "fine tuning" problem - if there is such a thing).

 

This could mean that the universe is infinite temporally (but doesn't require it) but still says nothing about the universe being spatially infinite or not....

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Everything is an emergent property of something. If the universe was extremely dense and homogenous then everything was causally connected...everything happened 'now'. When the universe expanded, space came into being and so did time.

 

This is my pet idea but the relevance to the OP is that, the Pre-BB mechanism is an open question... as Strange ironically just pointed out.

 

When thinking aboutthis I think it is important to view everything from the frame of 'inside' the universe, as models that view from the 'outside' just complicates things and may well be in error.

Edited by StringJunky
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If the universe was extremely dense and homogenous then everything was causally connected...everything happened 'now'

Is this theoretically possible ? Would it not need to have been more than extremely dense? More like one object?

 

Or can "objects" be the wrong way to look at things? Can all all things be "connected" somehow even when conditions are not "extremely dense" ?

Edited by geordief
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Is this theoretically possible ? Would it not need to have been more than extremely dense? More like one object?

 

Or can "objects" be the wrong way to look at things? Can all all things be "connected" somehow even when conditions are not "extremely dense" ?

Dense is a relative expression; dense as in denser at time zero than later on. Time is relative to something, so, if the universe was causally connected, then there is no other object to relate it to. It's only when space manifests then each part of the universe becomes distinct and the time for photon exchange becomes a potentially measurable property

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Strange - im done with you - go out to your yard and play with your imaginary unicorns.

 

!

Moderator Note

 

This is not going to fly.

 

You've been asked to defend your position, which is entirely reasonable for a science discussion board. It should be no surprise that it runs afoul of our "no soapboxing" rule. Your personal comments (calling people a simpleton, stupid, etc.) are likewise in conflict with the rules.

 

Don't violate yet another rule by going off-topic to respond to this in the thread

 

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I thought on a science board there would be intelligent people that understood that space and time are infinite.

 

I suppose the most basic proof of infinity is with numbers. No matter how big a number is you can always add 1 - forever.

 

Space is the same - no matter how far you were to travel in space you can always go further - there is no end of space just as there is no end of numbers.

 

Time is the same. If you could go back in time you could always go back a little further - no beginning of time.

 

Seriously, this should learned by the 1st grade, its not that complicated.

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