Possibly stupid universe question
Discussion
mrmr96 said:
Our brains were never designed with this in mind! (pun intended)
A bacteria on a slide has no idea what a grain of sand is.
An ant has no idea what a mountain is.
A human cannot properly understand the size of the sun or the solar system, much less anything beyond that.
Our brains are built to deal with the scale at which we live our lives. We can cope with thins smaller or larger to a degree, by building our familiarity. But I struggle to believe that anyone (even at NASA) can properly COMPREHEND how big some stuff out there in space is. I'm sure they can tell me exactly how big it is in abolute or releative terms (e.g. Mars is x% of the size of Earth) but that's not the same as truly having a COMPREHENSION of what that means. Our brains are not built for it.
We have the maths that can describe it and make accurate predictions (suggesting the maths is "right" or pretty close to "right") but it is almost impossible to visualise as our brains are evolved for 3D living at non-lightspeeds to scales of metres and seconds, not lightyears and millions of years.A bacteria on a slide has no idea what a grain of sand is.
An ant has no idea what a mountain is.
A human cannot properly understand the size of the sun or the solar system, much less anything beyond that.
Our brains are built to deal with the scale at which we live our lives. We can cope with thins smaller or larger to a degree, by building our familiarity. But I struggle to believe that anyone (even at NASA) can properly COMPREHEND how big some stuff out there in space is. I'm sure they can tell me exactly how big it is in abolute or releative terms (e.g. Mars is x% of the size of Earth) but that's not the same as truly having a COMPREHENSION of what that means. Our brains are not built for it.
ewenm said:
mrmr96 said:
Our brains were never designed with this in mind! (pun intended)
A bacteria on a slide has no idea what a grain of sand is.
An ant has no idea what a mountain is.
A human cannot properly understand the size of the sun or the solar system, much less anything beyond that.
Our brains are built to deal with the scale at which we live our lives. We can cope with thins smaller or larger to a degree, by building our familiarity. But I struggle to believe that anyone (even at NASA) can properly COMPREHEND how big some stuff out there in space is. I'm sure they can tell me exactly how big it is in abolute or releative terms (e.g. Mars is x% of the size of Earth) but that's not the same as truly having a COMPREHENSION of what that means. Our brains are not built for it.
We have the maths that can describe it and make accurate predictions (suggesting the maths is "right" or pretty close to "right") but it is almost impossible to visualise as our brains are evolved for 3D living at non-lightspeeds to scales of metres and seconds, not lightyears and millions of years.A bacteria on a slide has no idea what a grain of sand is.
An ant has no idea what a mountain is.
A human cannot properly understand the size of the sun or the solar system, much less anything beyond that.
Our brains are built to deal with the scale at which we live our lives. We can cope with thins smaller or larger to a degree, by building our familiarity. But I struggle to believe that anyone (even at NASA) can properly COMPREHEND how big some stuff out there in space is. I'm sure they can tell me exactly how big it is in abolute or releative terms (e.g. Mars is x% of the size of Earth) but that's not the same as truly having a COMPREHENSION of what that means. Our brains are not built for it.
I'm not sure if even our best minds can truely 'comprehend' some of the things we 'know'.
Slink said:
I think it was stephen hawking that once said, space is not just a blob shape, its actually a shape of a donut.
so if its the shape of a donut, whats in the middle where the hole is in the donut?
Nothing. That's why it's a hole...so if its the shape of a donut, whats in the middle where the hole is in the donut?
As for dimensions, see if you can find Carl Sagan's description of 'Flatland'.
mrmr96 said:
Our brains were never designed with this in mind! (pun intended)
A bacteria on a slide has no idea what a grain of sand is.
An ant has no idea what a mountain is.
A human cannot properly understand the size of the sun or the solar system, much less anything beyond that.
Our brains are built to deal with the scale at which we live our lives. We can cope with thins smaller or larger to a degree, by building our familiarity. But I struggle to believe that anyone (even at NASA) can properly COMPREHEND how big some stuff out there in space is. I'm sure they can tell me exactly how big it is in abolute or releative terms (e.g. Mars is x% of the size of Earth) but that's not the same as truly having a COMPREHENSION of what that means. Our brains are not built for it.
EFA.Twobad said:
Just put the idea of 'outside' the universe in the same box as 'pressures less than a perfect vacuum" or "temperatures below absolute zero". They don't exist and trying to imagine them will bend your mind because of this.
- cough*
Art0ir said:
mrmr96 said:
Our brains were never designed with this in mind! (pun intended)
A bacteria on a slide has no idea what a grain of sand is.
An ant has no idea what a mountain is.
A human cannot properly understand the size of the sun or the solar system, much less anything beyond that.
Our brains are built to deal with the scale at which we live our lives. We can cope with thins smaller or larger to a degree, by building our familiarity. But I struggle to believe that anyone (even at NASA) can properly COMPREHEND how big some stuff out there in space is. I'm sure they can tell me exactly how big it is in abolute or releative terms (e.g. Mars is x% of the size of Earth) but that's not the same as truly having a COMPREHENSION of what that means. Our brains are not built for it.
EFA.FunkyNige said:
Apologies for posting links, but these may be of use
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#...
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/Dltt_is_Dumb.htm...
Essentially it doesn't really make sense to measure distances in light-years, the example the second link gives is
If an SR-71 blackbird flies over at Mach 3 and you hear the sound 30 seconds later, then answer to the question "How far away is it?" is clearly not 30 "sound seconds" or 10 km
The reason for that is that the speed of sound, and therefore the distance it would travel in a putative 'sound-second' is variable. The speed of sound is much higher at sea level than it is at 30,000 feet, and in water it's much higher again.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#...
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/Dltt_is_Dumb.htm...
Essentially it doesn't really make sense to measure distances in light-years, the example the second link gives is
If an SR-71 blackbird flies over at Mach 3 and you hear the sound 30 seconds later, then answer to the question "How far away is it?" is clearly not 30 "sound seconds" or 10 km
The speed of light also varies to an extent (in a diamond, it's roughly halved) but light-years are used to measure distance in space, where the speed of light is a constant 186,000 miles per second. As such, it's a brilliant unit for measuring the massive distances that separate bits of universe from each other.
Hope that helps
ewenm said:
Rotaree said:
Getragdogleg said:
Eric Mc said:
TwigtheWonderkid said:
What is the universe expanding into?
Not a relevant question.It does not need to expand "into" anything.
It's like the TARDIS, the space inside could be getting bigger and bigger, but outside it's just a static police box. You could spend 13 billion years inside it, but from outside it was only an instant, or forever, you'd have no way to know, the physics are not interchangeable.
If the properties of physics outside the universe were the same as they are here, then 'what happened before the big bang' would be an answerable question.
The expanding universe is like those moving walkways you get at the airport, you're walking the same speed as normal but moving much faster compared to everything else. So the speed of light has been constant but due to the stretching/expansion of the universe everything has covered a much larger distance and we've and we can see objects that are further away than light would have ordinarily travelled in the given time.
qube_TA said:
The properties of physics, that we know here in this universe are unique to here, if you were somehow outside then the properties of physics there would be completely and utterly different. So it would be impossible to know how big or how old the universe was from outside it as they wouldn't be applicable, possibly/probably wouldn't be able to tell that it was even there at all.
It's like the TARDIS, the space inside could be getting bigger and bigger, but outside it's just a static police box. You could spend 13 billion years inside it, but from outside it was only an instant, or forever, you'd have no way to know, the physics are not interchangeable.
If the properties of physics outside the universe were the same as they are here, then 'what happened before the big bang' would be an answerable question.
The expanding universe is like those moving walkways you get at the airport, you're walking the same speed as normal but moving much faster compared to everything else. So the speed of light has been constant but due to the stretching/expansion of the universe everything has covered a much larger distance and we've and we can see objects that are further away than light would have ordinarily travelled in the given time.
I was with you as far as "The properties of"It's like the TARDIS, the space inside could be getting bigger and bigger, but outside it's just a static police box. You could spend 13 billion years inside it, but from outside it was only an instant, or forever, you'd have no way to know, the physics are not interchangeable.
If the properties of physics outside the universe were the same as they are here, then 'what happened before the big bang' would be an answerable question.
The expanding universe is like those moving walkways you get at the airport, you're walking the same speed as normal but moving much faster compared to everything else. So the speed of light has been constant but due to the stretching/expansion of the universe everything has covered a much larger distance and we've and we can see objects that are further away than light would have ordinarily travelled in the given time.
qube_TA said:
ewenm said:
Rotaree said:
Getragdogleg said:
Eric Mc said:
TwigtheWonderkid said:
What is the universe expanding into?
Not a relevant question.It does not need to expand "into" anything.
It's like the TARDIS, the space inside could be getting bigger and bigger, but outside it's just a static police box. You could spend 13 billion years inside it, but from outside it was only an instant, or forever, you'd have no way to know, the physics are not interchangeable.
If the properties of physics outside the universe were the same as they are here, then 'what happened before the big bang' would be an answerable question.
The expanding universe is like those moving walkways you get at the airport, you're walking the same speed as normal but moving much faster compared to everything else. So the speed of light has been constant but due to the stretching/expansion of the universe everything has covered a much larger distance and we've and we can see objects that are further away than light would have ordinarily travelled in the given time.
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