Golden Hello

We can maybe trace the universe back to the Big Bang, but why is there a universe? Why is there matter and energy and rules of physics?

Not only can I not figure out how our universe could exist, but I can't figure out how ANY universe could exist, not if Thor pulled it out of his nostril or it was formed at the beginning of time-- none of that would make sense. You can't get something from nothing.

Cynthetiq

because...

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

FoolThemAll

1. It came from nothing. "How is that possible?" I don't know.

2. God did it, and God existed forever. "How is that possible?" I don't know.

3. It existed forever. "How is that possible?" I don't know.

I don't see an advantage in any of these three choices, except that 1 and 3 are simpler.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

nezmot

Oh yes you can. Although, to be fair, zero pint energy in a vacuum is a feature, and as such, a part, of our universe - so it (the vacuum) is arguably 'something'.

I'm not sure the why question is relevant either. I mean, it just is. There's no reason for it. It's just here. How did it start? Now <i>that's</i> a question.

CSflim

Why does anything exist?

Well it would be pretty boring if it didn't.

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RussiaLv

We're currently on the topic of metaphysics in my Philosophy class, and this is quite the intriguing, mind-blowing topic.

asaris

Well, according to the ontological argument, God exists necessarily, and so the reason there's something rather than nothing is that it's a logical contradiction for there to be nothing. (Okay, so I'll stole this from a philosophy article a former professor of mine wrote. I think it's called "Why is there something rather than nothing?")

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Zyr

Good title.


I think the main thing I end up at when considering why, is why does there need to be a reason? People seem to need to asign some greater meaning to everything, where the answer is more likely to be that it's all an accident.

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

asaris

Well, ya see, everything has a cause, right? So either the universe is infinite (which 1) is as far as we know impossible and 2) arguably still means it needs a reason for being around), or it has a beginning. If it has a beginning, it needs a cause.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

roachboy

why?

and why do the terms beginning and cause need to be singular, even if you are right?

this seems close to tautology, in the same way as the ontological proof is--that is the question is framed by prior assumptions--once you see the assumptions, the proof is obviously tautological (outside that framework, the claim to tautology is meaningless, btw)---so you approach the question already believing in god, with all that this belief entails concerning assumptions re. unicty of Cause (god)--which presumably would be linked to the claim that there is a single design, etc etc etc---and so your argument simply repeats its premises.

i am not sure but this question (the op) seems particularly amenable to this kind of response--the question of origin appears to entail one of cause---but as both are speculative and bring with them no feedback loops that would disrupt the simple projection backward in time of beliefs held in the present, it seems to me that the whole thread is set up to generate a juxtaposition of tautological statements.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

noahfor

There must be something because how could there be nothing. Only something can be. Nothing means not being, so how could there ever be not being.

Or maybe.

There must either be something or nothing, but for either there must be the other to give it meaning, so for there to be nothing there must be something to give it meaning.

Of course, these are just weak arguments whose objects are the human understanding and not actual beaing and not being.

Or

Nothing? What is nothing? What's this mysterious nothing? I've never seen it. I can't imagine it. I don't believe in it. Maybe if I saw it for myself.

Charlatan

Why not?

Be satisfied that if it wasn't here there would be nobody to give a shit that it didn't.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

asaris

roachboy --

I'm willing to accept that there might not be a reason for everything. I don't personally believe that, but I don't have any generally valid reasons for my own beliefs either. It's just a premise for me. But if there's not a reason for everything, the op's question seems like a very, very good candidate for a question there's just no answer to.

To the extent that your response is saying that the principle of sufficient reason is a principle assumed by theists, I think you're mistaken. Of course, the origin of these sorts of arguments is Aristotle, and he wasn't exactly the sort of theist you tend to run into these days. It's probably a difficult historical question (regarding how influenced he was my Plato's own beliefs regarding 'god'), but it seems very unlikely he was culturally influenced into a belief in a creator God, and somewhat more likely that he viewed this belief as a necessary result of his philosophy. (Speaking of irrational fears, how about Aristotle's irrational fear of infinite serieses? )



And what's the plural of 'series', anyway? ...

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

roachboy

serieses?

series of series.
lots of series.

asaris: i am working my way through a nice book at the moment--henri atlan's "enlightenment to enlightenment: intercritique of science and myth"--the book does alot of stuff and is really quite smart, so i'd recommend it--here directly as opposed to the indirect recomendation i am about to give the book by stealing from it....

atlan has an interesting chapter in which he looks at the split between scholastic and more mystical traditions--he uses judaism as the jumpoff, talking about the split generated by maimonedes' work that resulted in the separation of kabbala from "rational" theology---the argument that atlan runs out about this split is interesting enopugh--but i found his formalization of scholasticism useful in that it says what i already knew better than i had been able to:

the problem is not aristotle but the usage of aristotlean logic ex post--scholastic thinking builds deductive proofs around axioms that are simple assertions of faith---and you cannot demonstrate axioms from within proofs structured by them---so the assumptions that are worked into axiomatic statements are dragged through the whole of proofs generated on the basis of theses statements---for example that god is single (though infinite--but in principle, what would singularity mean outside a finite space?)---god would be Cause (singular)--can be understood anthropomorphically (why? the "mystical" traditions routinely deny this starting move---kabbalah seems more logical in this regard)---and so Acts (singular again)--for some reason, these Acts are posited as being comprehensable in terms of a reductive notion of causality (which does not even hold for the material world that we know about, via a range of genres)--that is they generate Effect(s)....

so the story would go that some god Acts...this act is singular and its result is the universe, which is itself singular.
the logic that would get you to this position is wholly tautological from the viewpoint of a metagame that would position itself and its evaluative criteria outside the game of scholasticism (perhaps this distinction is also that of faith and its inverse)....in that the proofs are simply the elaboration of implications contained in the axioms, which are themselves not amenable to analysis from within the proofs they shape. ok then, you said that already.
then there is the question of the nouns themselves.
universe is singular. it names an observable phenomenon and enframes it at the same time. from our viewpoint, the universe appears to be singular. understood through our way of naming the phenomenon, the universe appears to be singular. but is it? outside the structure of scholastic-style proofs, where the assumption of singularity follow from a sequence of meaphysical assertions, and if you control to some extent for the effects of naming, why does the universe have to be singular? it seems absurd, when you start to think about it.
it appears to simply transform into an absolute a particular viewpoint.
we are here.
here is a discrete place.
how do you know?
you name it as such, so it is.
what is not here is there.
there is a discrete place only because it is not here.
why is that?
naming again. noun-effects.

another way:
why would there be a requirement for a single cause? if you cannot assume the universe is singular apart from the attempts to make absolute what is obviously a particular relation-to, where does the desire to even think about cause come from?
relative to scholastic-style proofs, the question answers itself---it is axiomatic, and the effects of the structure of this axiom would simply repeat at every level of the proof structured by it--and the rules for combination/derivation that enabled the proof itself would function to disallow moves that strayed outside the purview staked out by the axioms. this outlines a self-enclosing, self-referential, self-confirming system of logic.

even if the above was not a list of problems--what would cause mean in this context?

sometimes i wonder if we are spinning around in some curious subatomic structure in some arbitrary sector of the body of some creature that is its timeframe may well being making a grilled cheese for lunch one thursday or its equivalent. maybe this creatures looks up and wonders if it too is spinning around in some curious subatmoc structure in some arbitrary sector of some creature that, in its timeframe, is doing something else. maybe at some point, the notion of increasing scale begins to flip into its opposite and efforts to position oneself in a hypothetical macrostructure begins to reverse direction and so sets up an enormous loop.
or maybe not.

the condition of possibility for this is the same language as enabled scholasticism. the abstract quality of language enables one to posit any number of scenarios. the trick is in the frame.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

asaris

I'll probably try to say something more comprehensive, but I'm in class right now, so I'll just say that by the word 'universe' or 'world', what I mean is 'everything that there is'. So it's hard to see how this could be other than singular.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

roachboy

on the other hand, the category is simply a convention that entails the fact of a grouping--it says nothing about what is grouped, except that is has been subjected to the act of grouping.

got to go teach nietzsche hi ho....have fun in class

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Nimetic

All universes come from nothing.

Have you ever seen a universe that has always been in existence?

Nimetic

On the one level - I hear you. On another level....

There's no milk in the fridge.

My old fridge is largely full of nothing (plus a little mould).

Ignoring quantum stuff for a minute... of course there can be nothing. It's quite a common everyday occurrence. There's nothing in my pockets. There's nothing in outer space...

It's no more unusual than zero. And we use the concept of zero all the time.

Zyr

That "nothing" is a lack of something significant to you, but that doesn't mean there is nothing there. What's happening in Hamilton, New Zealand (where I am sitting) may not matter to you at all, but I can assure you, there is stuff here (it's pretty boring, but it's here). The world does not disappear when you close your eyes.

Of course, the lack of something is something itself. Even if you had an absolute vacumn in your fridge, there is something there, space. There is room to put things. There is potential in everything, even just conceptually.

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

Nimetic

Was that a reply to me - because it doesn't contradict it. In fact we seem roughly on the same page here.

When I said that there's nothing in the fridge... I meant nothing. One of my fridges is empty. I wasn't talking about it in the close-the-door-now-it's-gone sense. : >

Nimetic

One could also argue that you are in fact correct, in which case the universe cannot and does not exist.

Or alternatively, we could postulate that in some cases stuff can be produced from nothing, in which case a universe can come into existence and we can be here.

Hows that?

(Oh yeah. I hate to spoil the symmetry of the argument - but the universe might always have been here).

asaris

But it's not enough to object to a grouping just by saying that it's a convention. You need to point out that it exclude something it's intended to include, or includes something it's meant to exclude. And it's hard to see that this applies to "everything there is".

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Martian

You're confusing the issue - you're assigning cause and effect where there need not be any.

The rules of our universe only apply to our universe. Time, cause and effect, before and after.. hell the laws of conservation. All of it is a function of our universe. Assuming there are other universes like ours, they may follow identical rules or they may be radically different. It's hard to say.

Time is tied into space; therefore before and after (and, by extension, cause and effect) are dependent on being where we are. We cannot explore outside our universe, therefore these are laws that always apply to us. It is, however, a logical fallacy to assume they always apply to everything.

Asking what caused the universe to be is implicitly asking what came before the universe. This is not only a question that we are entirely unable to answer, it's a question that has no answer. It's completely meaningless, because there was no time prior to the big bang - it is functionally the beginning of time and space.

I like to use an analogy commonly attributed to Dr. Hawking. When asked what came before teh big bang, he responded with the question "what's north of the north pole?" Neither question is answerable, because they both hit the limits of the measurements used.

From a more theoretical standpoint, Charlatan touched on what's known as the Anthropic Principle. Essentially it states that things are the way they are, because if they weren't we wouldn't be here to question them. The universe necessarily exists because you're questioning it's existence. If it didn't exist in the form it's in, you wouldn't be able to ask the question you do. When taken in conjunction with the quantum theory of probability and multiple time lines, it creates a fascinating overall view - because it's possible, however improbable, that this universe exists, it must do so on some timeline. And because it must exist, we must necessarily be here to ask why.

I have a feeling this might cause more confusion than it clears up, but whatever.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Zyr

Nimetic: Yes, that post was in responce to yours, I guess I was just ranting rather than agreeing or disagreeing. The point is, people may point out that while you say there is nothing in there, there is. In a physical sence there is air, and in a more metaphorical sence, there is space. These do not factor into your idea of "something", a lack of which is nothing.

As for the universe needing a cause, I guess people assume a cause precedes any effect, where the universe is the effect. Of course that would require a before, something that may not exist, as Martian said. In addition to that, is what Nimetic said, that the universe may have always been.

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

flstf

I think perhaps our concepts of existence and non-existence, or something and nothing are not valid. We view reality in the framework of our simple brains and try to pigeon-hole it into terms we can understand.

We have not evolved to the point where we can even begin to understand the true nature of things. Us naked apes have a long way to go. What a wonderful mystery for our limited brains to attempt to comprehend.

asaris

Let me introduce a distinction. I've been speaking of the universe as 'all there is', purposefully to include other 'universes' there might be. But it seems like, from Martian's comments, it might be useful to use the word 'universe' to speak of this particular space-time that we're in. But I still want to be able to refer to 'all there is', so lets call that the 'world'.

It's true, as Martian argues, that other universes might have different physical laws that what our universe has. But he goes on to argue that they might have different logical laws as well, and that's just impossible. Let me look at two possibilities: either the laws of logic apply to all universes, or they do not. If they do, then QED. But if they don't, we can't possibly say anything useful about them. The laws of logic are a prerequisite for us being able to talk about anything at all. So if we're actually going to talk about these other universes, we have to assume that the laws of causality apply to them, or any assertion we might make about them will be meaningless.

None of the above should be taken to entail that the laws of causality entail a 'before' and 'after', simply because causality as such doesn't require it. But we can still speak of a logical ordering. We might say, for example, that before God created the world, he surveyed all the possible worlds, and picked this one. We don't mean that he did so before creating the world, because God is (probably) outside of time and because there's no 'before the world was created', as many have pointed out. If you like, you can say that this occurred 'simultaneously' with the creation of the world. But there's a logic to talking about things in this order, and because we are inside of time, it's natural for us to do it that way. So it's not the cause that asking what caused the world is the same as asking what came before the world.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

roachboy

here's the problems, asaris:

if the term universe etymologically (according to my pal mr. oed) represents the fact of grouping everything into an abstract set, then it is not an object--the univers is, rather, the effect of a grouping----to wonder about a single cause is to assume that the grouping implies objectness and that the object is singular.

it is as if you confused "there" with an object and tried to impute a cause to it on that basis--except in the case of "there" you have a cause, which is your viewpoint. well, in both cases, you have a cause, and that cause is your viewpoint. the difference is that in the latter case the relational character of the category is self-evident, while in the former case, it is acquired the weight of its own history as category. but its character as category is as it is.

btw i do not know, any more than anyone else does, whether this grouping is correct or not--that is whether it speaks to basic features of what is grouped or not--i do not occupy a position outside the same frame of reference as you occupy--but this obviates nothing concerning the character of the category "universe" and its effects, particularly in the context of questions like "why does anything exist"---if you want, you could answer the question by saying that what exists is what is named, what is integrated into linguistic categories, and so if there is a cause, it is the integration of phenomena into meaning via language and so we cause meanings because we assign them--again, with the caveat in place that these assignments may or may not get to characteristics of what is described--particular modes of inquiry (sciences, say) operate to post and to attempt to resolve these types of questions....philosophy worries about the semantic contents, etc.....


here is a far more elegant version of the argument i am making---over the past couple days, i have wandered back into wittgenstein's tractatus (sounds pretentious, doesn't it? such is my 3-d life..)----have a look at the sequence of statements that makes up section 6.34 through no. 6.35. you should find them here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/wor...fk_files=13249

wittgenstein is far more elegant and to the point.
i'd love to write like this, but i talk too much and am not anywhere near as disciplined.
his work is a long sequence of beautiful objects.


btw our posts crossed....this doesnt address the post directly above.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Nimetic

In a way, the presence of air doesn't matter. Why, because we could quite easily build a fridge that didn't hold any air.

But also... if you know that there's air there (because you've been told), and if that makes you feel that an absence of other stuff in the fridge is ok, well then I might as well say that there's an "aether" existing in the absence of a universe, a substrate on which the universe exists. Ok Ok. Not such a great example... but do you get what I'm saying?

Going back to the fridge example.... you might point out the presence of quantum "froth" or particle antiparticle pairs - even in a vacuum. In this case my reply is that a cosmologist is likely to come up with something else just as theoretical sounding that existed prior to the universe.

None of these are relevant really to the macro level issue of "is it possible for nothing to exist... I've never seen that". I'm simply saying that this (latter) question is silly - because in the everyday world we often have an 'absence' of things.

I hope that makes sense....

streak_56

it can come down to two things.....

god created things to be this way

or

evolution

Martian

I'm sorry, I might have oversimplified. It's not that cause and effect are the same as before and after, simply that the way we perceive them is dependent on the way we perceive our universe.

Let's go with a common theory that the reason we perceive time the way we do is because of the universe's expansion. Now imagine, if you will, that the universe were to begin to collapse inward upon itself. If we reverse the expansion of the universe into a contraction, we can similarly reverse the flow of time. Before becomes after and vice versa. In the way we perceive the world now, cause always precedes effect. There is a definite temporal distinction between the two. However, if we were to reverse the flow of time, the order of cause and effect would likewise be reversed. The reaction would precede the action; or for a more concrete example, an egg would shatter and then be dropped (only all in reverse, so that in being dropped it would actually propel itself upwards - think of a VCR on rewind).

Now, working with the same temporal theory, let's imagine that the universe were to suddenly cease any sort of movement. Abruptly, it is neither expanding nor contracting. If we stop the expansion of the universe, we similarly stop the flow of time. The result becomes that cause and effect are meaningless, because we can only understand them in a temporal sense - effect comes after cause.

The universe, if we accept the big bang theory, began as an infinitely dense mass that was also infinitely small; what's generally referred to as a singularity. This object in such a form is incapable of expanding or contracting; it simply exists. Therefore, because there is no expansion of space-time, there is no before and after. Without before and after, cause and effect lose meaning. And if they lose meaning, so too does the question of what was the cause of the universe. It may have been God, or giant space slugs, or who knows what else - we're incapable of ever knowing such a thing. It's outside the bounds of time.

I should also correct a slight bit of creative license on my part in the above post. It's not just difficult for us to know what form other universes take, it's currently impossible. They're outside our space-time and therefore outside the bounds of our perception. Quantum theory seems to indicate that an infinite number of universes exist in parallel, but according to what we know now there's no real way of bridging the gap from one to the next (aside from the Heisenberg principle, which by it's very nature disallows any observations to take place).

You might picture this as a ball pit at an amusement park. There's a massive number of balls in the pit; now imagine we and all we know are trapped inside one of these balls. We may some day theorize that there are other balls out there somewhere, but we have no way of ever observing them, because we're limited by the walls of our own sphere.

And yes, I suppose you could break the containing ball, but that's where the analogy breaks down. After all, how does one break the universe?

EDIT - In being a windbag, I forgot to point something out. Nimetic, what I stated was that we can't know whether any other universes follow the same laws as ours or not - therefore, as you aptly pointed out, any conjecture about them is absolutely meaningless.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

braindamage351

I could fill up a post with odd theories that don't really make sense or I could tell you the truth: We don't have any freaking clue. It's the same as every other aspect of metaphysics, all we have is completely useless speculation and the vague feeling that we're making some progress, when in reality we're getting absolutely nowhere.

There is no magical logical trick that you're going to find to answer questions like this. We'll only learn as much about the universe as we can discern from the evidence.

d*d

we trace back the universe and find a plausible model to it's existence in the big bang, a lot of energy - but why is it there? this is tantamount to asking the meaning of life - we can't possibly expect to come up with a measurable, proveable answer.

It exists - proof enough, why? why not

harry

Well thats the fundamental question of philosophy, and if you find the answer please tell me, cause it would be the answer to, well, life, the universe and everything, if im allowed this quote.

Personally I dont think anyone can come up with a good answer for this, unless you are prepared to believe in a random explanation i.e. if you are the religious type. The universe is just there - deal with it.

evolution has nothing to do with this.

Martian

The Universe came from 42?

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

flstf

We are trapped in a closed universe. It expands then contracts in on itself and another big bang starts another cycle and on and on. During the expansion and contraction numerous forms of inteligent life emerge and die. We must figure out a way to remove ourselves outside of this monotonous repetition so we can figure out what the heck is going on.

asaris

flstf -- actually, from what I understand of physics, that model of the universe is impossible.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Zyr

Care to elaborate, asaris?

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

asaris

Stephen Hawking (in A Brief History of Time, IIRC) writes that that model of the universe is impossible. Once the universe collapses back in on itself, it'll just be a big black hole, not whatever it was at the beginning of the universe, and so won't be able to expand again.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

flstf

Stephen Hawking is probably wrong. At any rate we need to escape this impending collapse somehow. If Hawking is right then maybe we only have this one cycle to accomplish this.

Martian

asaris is sort of right. Dr. Hawking was in fact right, but asaris' interpretation of his work is a bit misleading.

The Big Bang was a singularity, just like any other black hole out there; the key difference is that the Big Bang singularity contained all the matter in the universe and, for some reason, it exploded. The why of it is unknown and likely can never be known, since it's outside time.

But the Universe still isn't likely to collapse inwards on itself.

What's being discussed here is generally referred to as the Big Crunch theory. It's one of several models describing the end of the Universe. The Big Crunch depends on the idea that even though the Universe is currently expanding, gravity will eventually catch up with that expansion and cause the Universe to slow down and eventually collapse back inwards.

The other two models that were dominant in the field of cosmology when Dr. Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time posited that the Universe would expand at a constant rate or that it would expand at a perpetually slower rate, but that gravity would not ever be sufficient to halt the expansion. Both of these models lead to one of two ends, being either the Big Freeze (when the heat energy of the Universe is so far spread out that it's impossibe to sustain life) or heat death (when entropy causes the Universe to become uniform in nature, again making life impossible).

These theories are really cool and all, but there's only one problem; all observations since then seem to point to the universe expanding at an increasing rate; in other words, instead of expanding steadily or slowing down, the expansion is actually accelerating. This makes the idea of a Big Crunch highly unlikely, but those doomsday theorists need not fret, because odds are the Universe will one day be unable to support life in any case. This is unavoidable and we cannot escape it (since we are a part of the Universe and necessarily contained within it).

Don't let the Big Freeze or the Big Crunch keep you up at night, though. Our sun will die billions of years before any such scenario comes to pass.

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I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame