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Rank: Advanced Member Groups: Member
Joined: 7/15/2008 Posts: 114 Points: 257 Location: nyc
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as we understand this universe it is expanding since the "big bang"-if that is so then i believe that all that exists within the universe from the tiniest quantum particle to the largest objects [stars] are also constantly expanding at the same rate so the true size of the universe is unknown -there is no way to measure this because any instrument that exists or will be conceived will also be expanding at the same rate--if for instance- everything expands at a rate of 1 inch every 24 hours a measuring ruler or any other device will also have expanded 1 inch--so in effect what was measured yesterday is today the same size only larger by 1 inch---is this worth thinking about?:
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Rank: Advanced Member Groups: Member
Joined: 3/19/2008 Posts: 981 Points: 2,955
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definitely worth thinking about and a very interesting perspective. ultimately everything is relative, isn't it. time, too, being inextricably related to space per Einstein, is malleable and can not be truly measured, except relative to an accepted standard of time. i reality is truly based on perception and observation, it seems pretty clear that time and space may not only appear differently in different epochs, but also simply to different observers. so a fruit fly's 24-hour lifespan may feel just as long to the fly as our lives do to us. thanks for the thought-provoking post and welcome to the forum!
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Rank: Advanced Member Groups: Member
Joined: 1/12/2010 Posts: 38 Points: 114 Location: in front of your desktop
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If you are an intelligent virus living in the mass of a panettone and dwelling in just a single fruit within (one among 1/4 cup of raisins ), maybe you perceive an expansion watching the other raisins inside but there's no way to understand the acceleration unless it knows the whole panettone which of course it doesn't. We send telescopes and satellites to outer space and yet these devices are too close to earth and never escaped Milky Way which is merely a forgotten corner at the edge of the universe and because these data (just extensions of our weak visual system) we think "oh, yeah, we really know the extension of the universe!" which is absurd. It's like someone setting a micro camera somewhere in the corner of the bathroom at Canadian Skydome stadium and thinking from that perspective we can watch perfectly a baseball game with whole lotta detail! The whole expansion could well be just an optical illusion. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Skydome_Rogers_Center_Toronto_Canada.jpg
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Rank: Advanced Member Groups: Member
Joined: 1/12/2010 Posts: 38 Points: 114 Location: in front of your desktop
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BTW, our personal window on the Universe is terribly small within a stunning range of wavelengths. With our eyes we see wavelengths between 0.00004 and 0.00008 of a centimeter ( where, not so oddly, the Sun and stars emit most of their energy). The human visual spectrum from violet to red is but one octave on an imaginary electromagnetic piano with a keyboard hundreds of kilometers long.Much of what you see is outside our human visual band, our eyes cannot register wave photons no matter how powerful they may be. Longer that the visual wavelength limit -up to about a millimeter- lies the infrared. At the short end is violet, with orange, yellow, green, blue and hundreds of overlapping shades. Longer waves, into kilometer-wavelengths toward the unknown end are what we call "radio." Shorter than the visual limit are the ultraviolet -all running in the vacuum at the speed of light. At less than a percent of the wavelength of visual light are X rays, and at a factor of 100 smaller are the deadly gamma rays. Hence, that Genesis "let there BE light" (did you notice in Hebrew never said "let's create light"?) was probably like gamma rays too powerful to be observed. That's why very wisely prophet Isaiah said God CREATED darkness (literally the word in Hebrew is BLACK FIRE) while light was merely "formed". In Hebrew (in case you ignore), create (barah) is out of nothingness while to form or model is something out of already pre-existing matter. Hence light was not created but just formed out of that darkness (hatom). The Wacholsky brothers (from MATRIX) know something of Hinduism and Kabbalah and wanted to create the effect of fire behaving like liquid for good reasons related to kabbalistic approach about the Genesis of the universe....
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Rank: Advanced Member Groups: Member
Joined: 1/12/2010 Posts: 38 Points: 114 Location: in front of your desktop
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Even if the universe is like a soccer dodecahedron sphere giving the illusion the cosmos is 120 times bigger than actually is, I guess we need to be in the very center of that "ball" to have a better perspective of the reality. Yet if that universe is expanding (and I am not convinced it is) it's unlikely that we could reach that center in an ever stretching chiclet bubble gum universe..... Who knows, maybe what we consider eliptical in our perspective could be seen circular from the center..... and the opposite as well...
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Rank: Advanced Member Groups: Member
Joined: 3/19/2008 Posts: 981 Points: 2,955
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actually, every point in the universe, or even in the Level I multiverse (see Tegmark), is surrounded by a Hubble volume, beyond which one can not observe, due to the speed of light. but, as many of us suspect, the speed of light shall be breached (it's easy in a programmed reality), which makes the Hubble volume infinite and opens us up to Tegmarks Level II concept, albeit pure conjecture. if we are indeed living in a sim, it's all moot. the right tweek in the program, the right portal, can jump me anywhere.
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