The Great Universe Debate

[Buce]

16 minutes ago, Webbo said:

Been there, done that. Still do sometimes, I even remember things I did at school and cringe. I'm very bitter about my Dad, who'd call a kid Webster ffs? His constant negativity towards me made me feel useless, his selfishness meant we never had what other kids had. I never had a bike like the other kids in the street meaning I couldn't join in, I used to go school with the sole hanging off my shoes, patches in my trousers . I t could be a very humiliating experience.

 

The thing is, you've got to forget all that, it doesn't do you any good. Blaming everyone else, even if they are to blame, might make you feel better about yourself but it doesn't change anything. Only you can change your life. You've got to shut out all those negative thoughts. Going back to school is a good idea, when you're in social situations, don't try so hard and if I was you I'd get on a dating site (not tinder). Having a woman in your life works wonders for your confidence.

 

I appreciate you probably didn't want me telling you how to live your life and I can understand that. It just breaks my heart to see people unhappy. I really hope things turn round for you.

 

That's an eye-opener, Webbo.

 

Excellent post.

[SpacedX]

11 hours ago, Carl the Llama said:

Just stumbled upon this brain melting article and naturally I thought of this thread:

 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/first-observation-of-antimatters-spectrum-looks-like-regular-matter/

 

One sentence in particular intrigues me:

Could this mean that the reason we have such difficulty finding antimatter in our universe is because rather than cancelling each-other out in a big explosion as postulated, the two things actually 'exist' in tandem? 

That is to say that while we experience life 'forwards' on the temporal plane, from a theoretical outside perspective we would be seen to simultaneously exist as both matter beings moving forwards and anti-matter beings travelling backwards in time.  That would suggest that the universe doesn't really exist but rather we are the illusion of something existing experiencing itself from within one specific mathematical plane contained within a non-existent void of cancelled-out matter and anti-matter.  

 

Probably not or else I imagine the big boffins at CERN would have already thought of it by now but still it's interesting to think about.

(Incidentally, you should consider changing your surname to Sagan...very interesting post.)

 

Doubtless they have - but on that subject...

 

 

9 hours ago, The Doctor said:

so unless you've got the technology to temporarily imprison it away from matter it's going to get annihilated very quickly.

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys2025

 

As you suggest, physicists have indeed created and trapped atoms of antihydrogen for more than a thousand seconds,  which was sufficient time to conduct experiments that aim to answer some of the most fundamental questions in physics. The same scientists, based at the Alpha collaboration in Cern, were the first to trap antihydrogen when they created and held on to 38 atoms for 172 milliseconds in a strong magnetic field. In the linked seminal study, they trapped 309 antihydrogen atoms for varying amounts of time up to 1,000 seconds (just over 16 minutes). the purpose of the experiement was to compare antimatter with atoms of normal matter.

 

The answer that scientists are seeking is precisely what Carl is pondering - why antimatter seems to be absent from the observable universe. The laws of physics do not differentiate between matter and antimatter so, at the creation of the universe during the big bang, equal amounts of both should have been made. For every particle of matter in the universe, there should be a particle of antimatter. In practice, though, we do not see them. 

 

Cosmologists postulate that in the formation of the universe there was probably an infinitesimally small excess of matter particles over antimatter particles. When the particles came into contact and the inevitable annihilations occurred in the earliest seconds of time, the universe was left only with matter particles meandering amid copious amounts of energy. Quite why this asymmetry occurred during creation is unknown. There could be some as-yet-unknown differences between matter and antimatter particles – theoretically, there should be no differences. This research is still in its nascent stages, but it is envisaged that by examining differences between antihydrogen and normal hydrogen, scientists will be able to interrogate whether the two atoms are as identical as physics theories imply, or whether the theories themselves need to be tweaked accordingly

 

Antimatter annihilations convert the entire mass of the particles involved into energy, following E = mc2. A huge amount of energy can be produced from little mass – a kilogram of matter annihilating with the same amount of antimatter will release around as much as the Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear device ever built. However, antimatter currently takes far too long to produce, and at too high an energy cost, for either weapons or fuel to be practicable. CERN claims it has taken several hundred million pounds to produce just a billionth of a gram, and that to make a gram of antimatter would take about a 100 billion years.

[Izzy]

10 hours ago, Carl the Llama said:

You're too kind.  I can buy the tyres, did even, I'm just going to need to plan food very carefully for the rest of the month and indeed next month if anybody's getting presents for Christmas. Doesn't help that my older sister's birthday's just been and I kinda had to get her something to save a little face after already failing to secure a gift for my other sister for the 2nd year running, this time because it came during my jobless spell. Charity starts at home mate. I'm sure your family understand your financial situation and don't expect lavish gifts from you. My wife's family are skint and they buy our kids one present each at £5 max. We probably spend over £30 each on theirs. It's just the way it is and everyone understands each others' different position.

 

And to answer your question since it's something I think about a lot and therefore have a somewhat detailed answer for:  Since adolescence I've been a permanent nervous wreck around people but I yearn to be a well-adjusted individual which leads me to constantly belittle myself for being impossibly socially awkward (as in when

I don't have something distracting me my head constantly fills with memories of awkward situations or dumb things I've done in front of people and all I can think is what a cvnt I am, often even vocalising that point to myself if say I'm driving my car alone).  Sounds like you've mastered the art of beating yourself up - it must be exhausting. I wonder if your constant negative affirmation has become a self fulfilling prophecy? It's bizarre because you come across on here as extremely well adjusted to me. You've got to let the past go if you really want to move forward with your life mate...

 

This in turn leads to a lack of personal application in my free time because the second I've finished 'work' (be that an actual job or attending lectures in my uni days) I just try to switch off completely and chase meaningless videos/games/chats/spliffs to distract me from thinking about how awkward I am.  I realise on the face of it it doesn't sound that bad and indeed other people definitely have more important problems but for me it's completely paralysing.  This means that I never get any coursework or self-improvement done.  It also doesn't help that in spending a long period of my life constantly chasing new interests to try and fit in I've ended up with a complete lack of self-determination which adds to the self-hate, in fact these days the only interest I'm certain of having is City, the rest is just coping mechanisms or attempts to fit in.  Notice again how you wear this badge of 'awkwardness' to go with 'nervous wreck' and other phrases to put yourself down. As long as you keep playing this record in your head, you'll be forever stuck. I bet if I and others on here met you for a pint, we'd have a completely different opinion of you. Give yourself a break and try loving yourself for the beautiful flawed genius you are. You can't expect others to love and admire you if you don't love yourself first.

 

I have definitely wasted my potential and ironically drifted away from friends because of this constant flight from anxiety about not being good enough at being social which lies at the core of my neuroses but as long as I'm not troubling other people or full on homeless I'm weirdly ok/complacent about that, that's why I blew up the other month when I was in true personal peril but now that I have some meagre income again it's 'cool' as long as I have internet, games and the occasional spliff if money permits to distract me from the barrage of self-deprecating thoughts and my increasingly depressing existence.  It's like despite being in my late 20's now, I'm stuck in a permanent state of amplified adolescent insecurity holding me back from ever achieving anything meaningful. This bit makes me sad  I'd give you a massive man hug if I could. Stop trying so hard to be 'good enough'. What is good enough anyway and how do you measure that? If I was a betting man I'd say you're destined to achieve something very meaningful in life one day. Just a hunch reading your posts on here but you come across as extremely smart and talented to me. Some people don't reach their potential until much later in their life, but you must believe it will eventually happen for you. 

 

Another messed up thing about it is I kinda resent my family for their parts in reinforcing all this innate negativity, be it my older sister who never had anything to do with me growing up (so she kinda gets a pass for having a negligible effect as far as I'm concerned), my twin who shat on everything I took pride in back when I was already being bullied enough in school but doing well with my grades, or my parents for never picking up on the extent of my social problems or bullying (then blaming me years later for not spelling it out to them - this despite my twin gleefully telling them about me having no friends on many, many occasions) but happily laying out thousands of pounds on my twin sister to go to an English school when we were in Belgium so she could do A-levels instead of the European Bac to make her life easier just because she couldn't be bothered to deal with the difficulty of learning another language at the already very good private school my Dad's job provided us for free (though that didn't stop her using what French she'd already learned from her brief time at the free school to coast a comparatively simple French A-level for free grades, smart gaming of the system there really).  Because of that she's now a very successful doctor who is actually really nice to me these days which is painful in its own right considering how bad she used to make me feel for even the smallest achievement and how she basically made sure that I never had a respite from being made to feel shit by other people, I've no doubt a lot of my self-loathing was learned from the way she and my bullies at school treated me. Yet despite all that resentment and them all being very successful in their own right I still feel obliged to get them nice things every year at great personal cost ie. the not eating much next month so they can have Christmas presents.  They are family after all. You're a saint really. It's admirable that you still put their Christmas presents above your own basic needs. But the past is not a destination and it's a waste of energy and time hanging out there. I was bullied a lot at school (skinny, ginger hair, easy target) and spent years resenting my childhood. But I can't change it and it all happened for a reason. I'd like to think it shaped my personality and made me a more caring and empathetic person. I've tried to take the positives from it all...

 

Quote

In their defence my parents have recently offered on the back of my recent breakdown to fund another attempt at education to make finding good paying work easier.  On the face of it I'd love that because I can't stand this cycle of constantly working my ass off for minimum wage for someone who has no intention of helping my development because they just want someone to do their work for the lowest price they can offer then eventually falling out with that employer for that reason then finding a new place and starting at the bottom again but I honestly have no idea what I would want to do (lack of self-determination) and I already know it would be futile anyway while I'm still the socially maladjusted, self-defeating and self-distracting mess with no application that I am.  That's why I went for the Nero job because they sold it as a place where you get proper training and can rise through the ranks quickly, I guess we'll see where I am in a few months, if there's been no movement I might have to give that offer more serious contemplation. I'd snap your parents hands off Carl and accept their offer. No disrespect to people working in a coffee shop, but you're better than that (and you know it really). It doesn't matter that you don't know exactly what you want to do with your life yet. You're not even 30 and I know plenty of people in their 50's who still don't know what they want out of life. 

 

Before anybody suggests therapy which is the obvious solution: I tried that at Uni and I just couldn't get my words across properly, constantly falling back on the instinct to understate the severity of my anxiety and make out like everything's fine under the watchful gaze of another person.  I'm apparently very good at that pretence and I have no reason to believe that instinct has gone, in fact I have every reason to know that it's still very much there.

 

But this isn't really the thread for this kind of discussion, we already have the depression thread.  Besides: I suspect my previous comment makes no sense to someone who actually knows how the science of it works, I just have a gift for saying things that sound like they might be intelligent if given long enough to plan it out (ie. in a message board setting instead of clumsily fumbling words out of my mouth in front of actual people, in many ways this place has been my 'therapist' for the past however many years my 2 accounts span for precisely the reason that I can take the time to really think about how to formulate the ideas I want to convey like I'm doing now). You do indeed have this gift, and I wonder how you can take this gift and make a career out of it. I'd encourage you to focus and build on your strengths rather than get hung up on what you don't like about yourself. We all have personality traits that we don't like but equally we all have strengths and gifts to share with the world.

 

Let your light shine brightly Carl. You were put on this earth for a reason and I really hope you find your purpose. 

 

 

[Carl the Llama]

1 hour ago, Webbo said:

who'd call a kid Webster ffs?

I'd always assumed that was your surname, suddenly my problems don't seem so bad  

 

Thanks for that post, I do appreciate it..  Reading it back you're right that I do sound a lot like I've got a chip on my shoulder about other people's actions - and indeed it's probably fair to say that's true - but in the grand scheme of things it's definitely myself who I get the angriest at, these days anyway.  Had a whole episode where I felt the whole world was against me when I was younger but now I've kind of accepted that even if there was truth to that sentiment, nowadays I do it to myself more than anything and everything else is just backstory.   I've tried the girlfriend thing but the reasons mentioned earlier make it almost impossible for me to maintain a relationship without feeling intense guilt for 'tricking' another person into believing I'm a stable individual worth committing time to and I inevitably end up sabotaging the relationship with my many neuroses.  Think my record is around 2 months before full self-destruction.

 

28 minutes ago, Izzy Muzzett said:

 

Again you're too kind Izzy.  You're completely correct that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy,  I suppose that's another part of the reason I'm reticent to try professional help again: If I'm doing it to myself then it's not exactly fair for me to occupy valuable resources that could be helping somebody else who's actually capable of mending their broken psyche instead of constantly seeking arguments to reinforce it.

 

I don't suppose a mod could move these posts to the depression thread?  Don't think they really belong in here clogging up an otherwise interesting cosmological debate.

[Vacamion]

 

I came into this thread to be enlightened.

 

I was, but not in the way I expected...

[Webbo]

19 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

 

 

I don't suppose a mod could move these posts to the depression thread?  Don't think they really belong in here clogging up an otherwise interesting cosmological debate.

I would do but I'm not sure how to do it and I'd probably balls it up. If we could all just post further stuff in another thread and leave this thread back on track please.

[lifted*fox]

I'm just gonna put it out there; I think Webster is a pretty cool name tbf. 

 

Probably more so these days, got a bit of a hipster-y vibe to it. 

[Strokes]

6 hours ago, lifted*fox said:

 

Probably more so these days, got a bit of a hipster-y vibe to it. 

That will only make him hate it more, you cruel man

 

[Great Boos Up]

On ‎22‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 16:23, whoareyaaa said:

How did the universe get here though? 

That is the brilliant question. Think about what questions were asked a thousand years ago, five hundred. a hundred, even fifty have all been answered. I think about this most days.

[Chico1958]

9 hours ago, Vacamion said:

 

I came into this thread to be enlightened.

 

I was, but not in the way I expected...

Me to, I don't know whether to offer advice or just go back and reflect on my not so perfect life and realise there are always people worse off than yourself.

 

By the way Webbo, Webbo's a cool nickname  

[Great Boos Up]

10 hours ago, Line-X said:

(Incidentally, you should consider changing your surname to Sagan...very interesting post.)

 

Doubtless they have - but on that subject...

 

 

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys2025

 

As you suggest, physicists have indeed created and trapped atoms of antihydrogen for more than a thousand seconds,  which was sufficient time to conduct experiments that aim to answer some of the most fundamental questions in physics. The same scientists, based at the Alpha collaboration in Cern, were the first to trap antihydrogen when they created and held on to 38 atoms for 172 milliseconds in a strong magnetic field. In the linked seminal study, they trapped 309 antihydrogen atoms for varying amounts of time up to 1,000 seconds (just over 16 minutes). the purpose of the experiement was to compare antimatter with atoms of normal matter.

 

The answer that scientists are seeking is precisely what Carl is pondering - why antimatter seems to be absent from the observable universe. The laws of physics do not differentiate between matter and antimatter so, at the creation of the universe during the big bang, equal amounts of both should have been made. For every particle of matter in the universe, there should be a particle of antimatter. In practice, though, we do not see them. 

 

Cosmologists postulate that in the formation of the universe there was probably an infinitesimally small excess of matter particles over antimatter particles. When the particles came into contact and the inevitable annihilations occurred in the earliest seconds of time, the universe was left only with matter particles meandering amid copious amounts of energy. Quite why this asymmetry occurred during creation is unknown. There could be some as-yet-unknown differences between matter and antimatter particles – theoretically, there should be no differences. This research is still in its nascent stages, but it is envisaged that by examining differences between antihydrogen and normal hydrogen, scientists will be able to interrogate whether the two atoms are as identical as physics theories imply, or whether the theories themselves need to be tweaked accordingly

 

Antimatter annihilations convert the entire mass of the particles involved into energy, following E = mc2. A huge amount of energy can be produced from little mass – a kilogram of matter annihilating with the same amount of antimatter will release around as much as the Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear device ever built. However, antimatter currently takes far too long to produce, and at too high an energy cost, for either weapons or fuel to be practicable. CERN claims it has taken several hundred million pounds to produce just a billionth of a gram, and that to make a gram of antimatter would take about a 100 billion years.

The simple answer is luck. Nothing is perfect. When the intense density and temperature cooled and weakened we have been left with a little more actual matter as you say. But what we are left with, even the planet beneath our feet is 99.9% space on an atomic level. It's the forces within the particle soup that produce temperature. We know the lowest temperature a proton can reach, but not the highest.

The higgs particles fitted but more research needs to be done.

[Buce]

 

In search of the neutrino:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/04/neutrino-ghost-particle-of-the-universe

 

[joachim1965]

Reading some of the posts on this thread made me realise that there are some great people on this forum, you know who you are. Makes me proud to be a leicester fan and a member on this great forum.

[Strokes]

1 hour ago, joachim1965 said:

Reading some of the posts on this thread made me realise that there are some great people on this forum, you know who you are. Makes me proud to be a leicester fan and a member on this great forum.

Thanks 

[lifted*fox]

There's some good people here.

 

I like busting balls but its just for fun, really. 

Edited 4 November 2017 by lifted*fox
Too many SPACES.

[Sampson]

On 03/11/2017 at 23:54, Carl the Llama said:

You're too kind.  I can buy the tyres, did even, I'm just going to need to plan food very carefully for the rest of the month and indeed next month if anybody's getting presents for Christmas. Doesn't help that my older sister's birthday's just been and I kinda had to get her something to save a little face after already failing to secure a gift for my other sister for the 2nd year running, this time because it came during my jobless spell.

 

And to answer your question since it's something I think about a lot and therefore have a somewhat detailed answer for:  Since adolescence I've been a permanent nervous wreck around people but I yearn to be a well-adjusted individual which leads me to constantly belittle myself for being impossibly socially awkward (as in when I don't have something distracting me my head constantly fills with memories of awkward situations or dumb things I've done in front of people and all I can think is what a cvnt I am, often even vocalising that point to myself if say I'm driving my car alone).  This in turn leads to a lack of personal application in my free time because the second I've finished 'work' (be that an actual job or attending lectures in my uni days) I just try to switch off completely and chase meaningless videos/games/chats/spliffs to distract me from thinking about how awkward I am.  I realise on the face of it it doesn't sound that bad and indeed other people definitely have more important problems but for me it's completely paralysing.  This means that I never get any coursework or self-improvement done.  It also doesn't help that in spending a long period of my life constantly chasing new interests to try and fit in I've ended up with a complete lack of self-determination which adds to the self-hate, in fact these days the only interest I'm certain of having is City, the rest is just coping mechanisms or attempts to fit in.  I have definitely wasted my potential and ironically drifted away from friends because of this constant flight from anxiety about not being good enough at being social which lies at the core of my neuroses but as long as I'm not troubling other people or full on homeless I'm weirdly ok/complacent about that, that's why I blew up the other month when I was in true personal peril but now that I have some meagre income again it's 'cool' as long as I have internet, games and the occasional spliff if money permits to distract me from the barrage of self-deprecating thoughts and my increasingly depressing existence.  It's like despite being in my late 20's now, I'm stuck in a permanent state of amplified adolescent insecurity holding me back from ever achieving anything meaningful.

 

Another messed up thing about it is I kinda resent my family for their parts in reinforcing all this innate negativity, be it my older sister who never had anything to do with me growing up (so she kinda gets a pass for having a negligible effect as far as I'm concerned), my twin who shat on everything I took pride in back when I was already being bullied enough in school but doing well with my grades, or my parents for never picking up on the extent of my social problems or bullying (then blaming me years later for not spelling it out to them - this despite my twin gleefully telling them about me having no friends on many, many occasions) but happily laying out thousands of pounds on my twin sister to go to an English school when we were in Belgium so she could do A-levels instead of the European Bac to make her life easier just because she couldn't be bothered to deal with the difficulty of learning another language at the already very good private school my Dad's job provided us for free (though that didn't stop her using what French she'd already learned from her brief time at the free school to coast a comparatively simple French A-level for free grades, smart gaming of the system there really).  Because of that she's now a very successful doctor who is actually really nice to me these days which is painful in its own right considering how bad she used to make me feel for even the smallest achievement and how she basically made sure that I never had a respite from being made to feel shit by other people, I've no doubt a lot of my self-loathing was learned from the way she and my bullies at school treated me. Yet despite all that resentment and them all being very successful in their own right I still feel obliged to get them nice things every year at great personal cost ie. the not eating much next month so they can have Christmas presents.  They are family after all.

 

In their defence my parents have recently offered on the back of my recent breakdown to fund another attempt at education to make finding good paying work easier.  On the face of it I'd love that because I can't stand this cycle of constantly working my ass off for minimum wage for someone who has no intention of helping my development because they just want someone to do their work for the lowest price they can offer then eventually falling out with that employer for that reason then finding a new place and starting at the bottom again but I honestly have no idea what I would want to do (lack of self-determination) and I already know it would be futile anyway while I'm still the socially maladjusted, self-defeating and self-distracting mess with no application that I am.  That's why I went for the Nero job because they sold it as a place where you get proper training and can rise through the ranks quickly, I guess we'll see where I am in a few months, if there's been no movement I might have to give that offer more serious contemplation.

 

Before anybody suggests therapy which is the obvious solution: I tried that at Uni and I just couldn't get my words across properly, constantly falling back on the instinct to understate the severity of my anxiety and make out like everything's fine under the watchful gaze of another person.  I'm apparently very good at that pretence and I have no reason to believe that instinct has gone, in fact I have every reason to know that it's still very much there.

 

But this isn't really the thread for this kind of discussion, we already have the depression thread.  Besides: I suspect my previous comment makes no sense to someone who actually knows how the science of it works, I just have a gift for saying things that sound like they might be intelligent if given long enough to plan it out (ie. in a message board setting instead of clumsily fumbling words out of my mouth in front of actual people, in many ways this place has been my 'therapist' for the past however many years my 2 accounts span for precisely the reason that I can take the time to really think about how to formulate the ideas I want to convey like I'm doing now).

This is really sad to read but Webb is right, you can't beat yourself up about these things and only you can change it.

 

One of things that makes Physics such a profound subject to me (and History also) is that it's a great reminder as to how small this all is and how precious life is and how you need to grab it by the horns while you're here - not through thinking your life is part of a grand narrative; not by religion or creating a piece or art or product that makes a difference; not by chasing some unrealistic fascist or socialist utopia; not by any of these things which will all be forgotten in time - Jesus, Mohammed,  Julis Caesar, Napolean, Ghengis Khan, Alexander the Great, Karl Marx, Adilf Hitler, Socrates, Plato, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein... None of these names are truly "timeless", their notoriety exists in a miniscule corner of the universe in a miniscule period of time within it and all those names will all be forgotten in time.

 

Despite being 3 of the greatest (if not the 3 greatest) military commanders in history, Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan and Napolean all died depressed - Alexander because he conquered the known world and had no land left to conquer and no life left to live when that was what defined him, Ghengis Khan because even though he conquered more land than any other person in human history still felt he could've conquered more and Napolean because he convinced himself he was bringing the enlightenment to the world and he'd lead the world to an enlightened Utopia which of course never materialised.

 

We all have to do some shitty jobs in our life to get by - I spent a year in a call centre cold calling people to sell them PPI and was called some variation of "vile ****" or "disgusting human being" almost every day, but work isn't your life. It's just there to earn you money to spend on things to enjoy. And I managed to get through it by just thinking of all the things that job gave me - all the travelling, the drinks with friends and the lifelong memories it earnt me.

 

If you can make a real difference while you're here, great! But the overwhelming majority of us won't, no one on this forum likely ever will, but that is a liberating thing, not a depressing thing! Because it makes you realise you have to make the most of it while you're here and that none of that matters anyway.

 

We're all Sisyphus eternally pushing the boulder up a hill only to see it roll down again, but it's ultimately our choice as to how we think when we push that boulder up the hill.

 

The late, great David Foster Wallace who sadly comiited suicide in the end left us with this great speech which is always worth watching every few months or so. I've watched it many times over the years and it never fails to remind me what's important in life.

 

 

[Buce]

@leicsmac

 

Now that astronomers have determined that the asteroid Oumuamua is of interstellar origin, will it be possible - by measuring trajectory and velocity - to determine in which star system it originated?

Edited 20 November 2017 by Buce

[Wymsey]

Why is the Earth round on the outside, but flat on the inside?..

[leicsmac]

4 hours ago, Buce said:

@leicsmac

 

Now that astronomers have determined that the asteroid Oumuamua is of interstellar origin, will it be possible - by measuring trajectory and velocity - to determine in which star system it originated?

The meteor was shot out of orbit by bug plasma, that derived from Klendathu, the Arachnids' home plane-

 

Ahem.

 

Well, from what can be ascertained thus far, Oumuamua came from the direction of the constellation Lyra (brightest star Vega), but it's speculated that it might have originated in the Carina Nebula and got thrown out of there roughly 45 million years ago, and ours in the first solar system its encountered since.

The latter part of that is conjecture though - it might have been going on its merry way by itself for billions of years before finding us - the only thing we can say with certainty is that it came from the direction of Vega.

[urban.spaceman]

On 20/10/2017 at 15:43, Captain... said:

The infinite monkey cage isn't specifically on the universe but covers it amongst other topics such as quantum physics and evolutionary theory.

 

It's Brian Cox with comedian Robin Ince helping to explain advanced scientific topics to layman with a few jokes thrown in for good measure.

 

Absolutely loved this last year. Pissed myself many times.

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

On ‎18‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 10:52, TiffToff88 said:

Pretty much, word for word, exactly how i feel. I could have arguments with myself on the universe.

 

How can anything be infinite? It can't just keep going. But at the same time, it can't just stop. If it stops, whats on the other side? There can't just be nothing 

Maybe you come back to where you started.

[Great Boos Up]

Not infinite. Definite. Try and think the other way. Pick up a small object near to you. The matter within that object (the actual physical thing) is minute compared to the space within that object. it in fact it is mostly nothing held together by forces. So image cutting that object in half, then halving it again and again..ect. There is no end to how small you can go (infinite) but there is an end where those forces have no effect or presence (definite).

If you thump your fist on a table it should go straight through it. Because it's 99.99% space. It's the forces at work within that space that effect. It's just a scenario of how much any how many forces apply in all dimensions across space.

[Kopfkino]

This is an interesting read. Lots of big words to scramble the Friday brain. Never personally read this concept before, seems bizarre to me but still interesting. 

 

Is the Universe a conscious mind?

https://aeon.co/essays/cosmopsychism-explains-why-the-universe-is-fine-tuned-for-life

[Buce]

22 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

This is an interesting read. Lots of big words to scramble the Friday brain. Never personally read this concept before, seems bizarre to me but still interesting. 

 

Is the Universe a conscious mind?

https://aeon.co/essays/cosmopsychism-explains-why-the-universe-is-fine-tuned-for-life

 

Thanks for that.

 

It's not a new concept, though - it has been explored in many science fiction stories that I have read, and undoubtedly many more that I haven't.

[leicsmac]

2 hours ago, Kopfkino said:

This is an interesting read. Lots of big words to scramble the Friday brain. Never personally read this concept before, seems bizarre to me but still interesting. 

 

Is the Universe a conscious mind?

https://aeon.co/essays/cosmopsychism-explains-why-the-universe-is-fine-tuned-for-life

I'll be honest - this reads like someone trying to get intelligent design, a concept I have very little time for, in through the back door.

 

Interesting ideas and plausible, but equally plausible is the idea that this Universe developed in the way it did simply through chance.