Broad Thinking: The Universe

[Shockwind]

I try not to think about stuff like that.. Messes up my mind

That's because you're just 12, Sop. And it's obvious that it'll just mess up your mind because it's too complicated.

But it won't happen if you always watch tv about Science and this kind of stuff.

 

[Searinox]

Wikipedia has all the answers you seek.

In short, spacetime is curved in on yourself like a bubble so that if you take a ship and go in one direction, you end up in the same spot, much like how on earth if you walk in a straight line you end up circling it. But space is expanding at the speed of light so you won't reach the edge. Furthermore, it appears that the expansion is accelerating meaning that local added velocities of the expansion are higher than the speed of light, and it's suspected it may one day rip itself apart.

PERSONAL opinion: I fully believe in the possibility of life appearing and thriving on another planet, but I strongly doubt that the UFO and conspiracy allegations thus far are anything more than manmade myths. We live in an era where information propagates quickly, and impossible to keep a secret ON a global scale. Furthermore if there was a global conspiracy to keep info distorted, then just look at dictatorships: they employ a vast censorship system to make sure such people do not discuss or claim stuff. But we and several coop heads from the military have been able to talk about it without being jailed or persecuted. But we have lots of shows movies and websited dedicated to the UFO phenomenon, claiming this and that, and some people actually believe it. It appears that no one is really afraid that this info is circulating.

Wormholes, if they exist, are proposed only at the centers of black holes, are the thickness of a subatomic particle, and the concentration of energy at that point is phenomenal, in other words you'd be ripped apart and destroyed in every way possible as you pass through them. Estimates to create a hole with enough "width" to allow a ship to go through would require a black hole with the mass of our universe. Where they lead to, we may not even be able to exist in our current form.

As for answering these questions, I believe while science is able to broaden our understanding of things, it ultimately can only do what is ALLOWED by the physics of the universe. Suppose there was NO WAY to EVER pass the speed of light -- our advancement and adventures to other planets would be severely impacted. Perhaps the reason we haven't made alien contact so far is precisely because of this limit. Call me pessimistic, but I think our dream era of space exploration that we see in scifi shows is not looking so bright... at any point in the future. I am not calling it impossible, but it will likely be snail-paced.

 

[Vigilante]

Its impossible to know things about the universe like does it have an end or how big is it.

But having other life forms is a matter of debate.
There is a big chance of having other life forms besides this our planet.
People just think there are no other life forms becausse they think that if there is no water or anything that humans need to live its already impossible for life forms to live.For all we know,they could have evolved and adapted to not having things us humans need to live...

Possibilities never end...and goes on forever

 

[Shinigami357]

The universe. Pretty big thing to think about. Personally I don't subscribe to the idea that the Universe is "finite" in the sense that it has discernible boundaries. That'd suck if you were lost in space in warp 9 and you reach the edge, then what will happen? Your spaceship get flattened, it forces you to turn or maybe since there's no more space around to warp, you'd suddenly screech to a halt?

It's rather hard (almost impossible, even) to think of something that is infinite, though. Maybe there is something out there beyond or apart from the Universe we know, much like when we look up at the sky we only see blue and some clouds, but out there, there is something more as we surpass the boundaries of our little planet. So that's my take on it, basically it is possible that at the outer limits of the Universe we will discover something. Maybe not something more, but almost surely something else that has escaped our attention.

As for travel, I'm sure there's a way around it. The main problem that everyone focuses on is the speed of light. The popular line of thinking decrees that it's faster-than-light travel or bust. I think the way around it is simple: take time out of the equation. The point is to get there (wherever "there" is), nothing more, nothing less. Find a way to negate or at least work around the time aspect and we're good to go as long as we know where we're going.

 

[DeadLocked]

Are there life forms with similar or even completely different (as in, for example, they don't need to prey on others or even need to eat and such) ways of living? Have any of them seen us? Recently they discovered a life form that can live in arsenic, meaning there are millions of other planets that we once deemed uninhabitable to have the possibility of aliens.
Ever wondered where you would end up if you actually survived a trip through a wormhole? I think you'd be a lot smaller :\

What I wonder is, is there other elements out there that we haven't found on earth? Maybe the government knows more than we do about this.

One of my theories: If the universe is indeed infinite, that means that every possibility of life you can imagine exists... Transforming robots, pokemon, na'vi.

Unless cryogenic freezing is a success and we can make renewable energy out of the sun enough to power a large ship then we won't see alien life on another planet, if those things become true, then we may see it if you're willing to be strapped in a frozen tube for millions of years. (Not saying they couldn't come here.)

 

[Raiser]

I think the universe is part of something bigger. Like the Galaxies are something like red blood cells to humans.
I must say, something like this would be a huge mindfuck.

QUOTE(Shinigami357 @ Apr 14 2011, 02:45 AM) It's rather hard (almost impossible, even) to think of something that is infinite, though.

This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the "vastness" of the universe. Following this, like DeadLocked above me says, every possibility of life could be possible. Civilizations of flying robot unicorns? You betcha.

 

[Searinox]

I strongly disagree with all life in the universe as mandatorily being carbon-based or requiring water as its prime solvent. There are many many many ways to do chemistry, and I believe given the right circumstances and time there is NO reason for live not to appear in many many types of environment.

I believe in the size, age, and lifespan of this universe being limited. However, I also believe there is something beyond it. Scientists have pointed a probable cause of the "big bang" as being the fact that the universe went into a "lower state".

Imagine water turning into ice as it cools. The ice starts to form at one point that happens to a lower temperature than any other point. It is called a nucleation, and from there on the freeze expands in a sphere until the whole liquid freezes. Here too it is speculated that the universe was once at a higher state where all physical constants, the fabric of spacetime, etc were different. When it dropped to a lower state, the current universe was formed.

Currently our universe is believed to be the 'vacuum' state, the lowest possible state it can ever reach. However, if we're living in a false vacuum and there is a lower state than this, someday it may very well have its start at some point somewhere, and expand in a sphere at the speed of light, obliterating everything we know and bringing the universe to an even lower state, at which everything works differently.

The idea of multiverses does seem plausible to me. At an "absolute" level, I believe there is a form of content called "REALITY", which comprises ALL the universes and worlds and so on, and which has an infinite lifespan. Again, I may be wrong. Not all nice ideas are real.

As for travel, suppose we reach a point where we can genetically engineer ourselves to be immortal, and to experience no "boredom". We could indeed make the many-decades trips to other stars seem less of a drag.

It IS POSSIBLE to travel in a ship WITH OUR CURRENT TECH at what may locally seem as faster than the speed of light. This is the "blessing"-side of the speed limit but its huge disadvantage is that it is PURELY SUBJECTIVE. If you're in a ship and accellerate to what seems to you like 100 times the speed of light, then you WILL INDEED reach your destination at 100x lightspeed. A trip that would take 100 years at lightspeed will only take 1. However once you reach destination and get out of your spaceship, you will notice that 200 years have passed. Basically you approach lightspeed and your time slows down so that the whole trip seems much faster to you, faster than light even, but in reality you are STILL slower than light. Also consider you're hitting stray rocks and even gas clouds at almost lightspeed. At that speed any collision with anything no matter how small is catastrophic, so it would only work if space was a true clean empty vacuum.

You could line up a billion rotating black holes and ride on their ergospheres so that the space being dragged around faster than light combined with your own speed make you reach the destination faster.

As far as the fabric of space is concerned, you're still slower than light. But it's like a highway with a speed limit, when the road itself is acting as a treadmill. You will reach your destination without any of the nasty time dilation effects mentioned in the previous paragraphs. If you use a string of rotating black holes as a highway, you will exit it with more momentum than you came in with. The extra energy is being extracted from the black holes' rotational momentum and will, with enough exploitation, slow their rotation to a halt. Not to mention the astronomical ammount of effort required to set up such a system.

Warping spacetime is the holy grail of faster than light travel. A spaceship with a properly warped spacetime field around itself could be the perfect solution to FTL travel. However, so far the only force we know to do this is gravity, and gravity cannot be "generated", it is a property of matter and energy. The amount of matter to curve spacetime enough for a ship to travel is that of a few suns. Given this, it is highly impractical. And you'd need to be carrying that matter with you everywhere, so it would have to be portable and light. If you squeeze so much mass into the size of a ship, it becomes a black hole.

 

[unseen4ce]

I don't want to get into a big debate about how I see the universe, beause Truthfully everyone sees it differently. And I see it in a way that most people do not, leading to conflict and isolation. I have aspergers (not an online test, not self diagnosed) and so it is easy for me to see things which I have since learnt others refuse to see.

But ultimately- will we ever be able to answer our own questions?

The universe is a part of us, I think we already know about it in many more ways then we realise, and the amount we know about it is a reflection of our own conciousness and evolution; where we are right now. So we will know the Truth eventually, but the Truth will continue to change as our conciousness changes. The universe is a reflection of our "inner" world (I hate "the secret"), and the inner and outter worlds can become as one, which leads to greater understanding, less suffering when expectations are not met and true wisdom.

A tachyon can travel faster than light, not because it is actually moving but because it is "outside" the universe. Maybe a strong electro-magnetic field could cause a disruption in space-time seperating a vessel from the universe and allowing it to "fold space" in a way -similar- to a worm-hole. You would need some way to guide the ship next, I believe this could be done with strong gravitational emitter/detectors, where the vessel is always "falling" or being pulled towards it's destination.

Are animals alive, their awareness is limited, ther conciousness may be very different, how can we say there are not living things around us that we do not recognise at present. Are there unseen lifeforms occupying a parallel space, so close yet so far. Are their invisible spirit world creatures, ghost, angels and demons. Are rocks concious to some extent.

Is everything conscious/alive or aware (may be very limited) to some extent?

Is the Earth conscious?

Greater awareness, being able to process and be aware of more information, seems to make things more "alive"/more evolved/more conscious. Humans are capable of processing a greater amount of information than a mouse, perhaps. What if we were capable of perceiving/being aware of an infinite amount of information, we would need to shed our bodies to give us greater perspective, greater sense.

Is this conciousness already in existence, an awareness that has been perfected, is aware of all things. Is this awareness a part of us? Is a perfect awareness the source of all life, lower life forms developing slowly, with greater and greater awareness, to become as the timeless awareness that is also aware of death, and life, and has become one.

Fear leads one to limit their awareness, to turn away, to deny death and themselves.

 

[nintendoom]

If you were to keep traveling in one direction through space, would anything change / happen?You will simply end back were you started, a bit like how if you walk around the Earth, trying to find it's edge, you will end up at the start point.

So you're saying that It's possible that the Universe is within another Universe[or the Universe has Another Space?]
(just like how Earth has a space]