Ever feel like you're insignificant? Well...don't look at this...

Perhaps infinitely so, assuming that some of those speculations in physics and cosmology are true. And some of those speculations say that anything that can physically happen will happen in all possible ways with infinite duplication. This gives us the ultimate in absurdity. In such a multiverse, nothing you do really matters cosmically speaking because it all happens all possible ways with an infinity of duplicates. Unless I suppose you contrive a way to destroy the entire infinitely large multiverse--mwahahaha.

Then again humans are great at ignoring the microscopic and cosmic. To us anything that matters is usually on our scale.

So let us heroes fight for what's right! Let us ignore that it doesn't matter a tinker's cuss on the cosmic scale!

Someone has watched Crisis on Two Earths too many times.

According to Avagadro that means there's more atoms in that mole on my back than there are connections in the human brain.

Actually it's more in line with nothing matters at all because it's not happening. Everything that you think of as having existed in the past, present, or future are extant unchanging and linear time is just this weird phenomenon that we are experiencing, but doesn't actually exist.


As far as going to the edge of the universe at light speed... I think the light speed part is wrong, but we will be able to one day go to the edge of the universe and back in minutes on a lark and eventually we will be able to go beyond our membrane or whatever you want to call it into other universes and other times, but at the scale we're talking about any point of us understanding that is a waste of time because that mindset s so far removed that it's impossible to really talk about other than theorizing infinite regression/progression.

but that's not what i said...

It's more like...

(10^11*10^14)^2

Wasn't aware of it until now but, now that I see it, maybe I will!

Ah yes, the view of time as provided by general relativity. The universe is a giant four dimensional, static manifold where in any observer's present moment is equivalent to a "slice" through the manifold and different observers take, or experience, different slices.

But this only produces other questions. For example, why do we experience the passage of time if time doesn't really "pass?"

Physics is the endless refinement of our understanding of what time and space are.


Well, assuming there is a multiverse of some kind and if some form of hugely faster than light travel is possible (And I mean hugely. I mean being able to travel 10^^4 light years in a tiny fraction of a second. That's 4 tetrates 10, ten exponentiated by itself four times, a number many zillions of times bigger than than googleplex.) at some point we'll have to confront such infinite immensity.

Just as Hubble's discoveries back in the teens and twenties of the last century forced us to confront the cosmos as we now know it.

Then again, maybe there isn't any multiverse, let alone an infinite one, so we can lie safe in our beds comforted at the notion that we only have to contend with the hundreds of billions of galaxies out there.

But then we have to confront the recently discovered facts about dark matter and dark energy and the visible stuff that we see is at most 4% of the actual universe.

A lot of the weirdness of physics comes from the weirdness of math.

For instance, you might be asked which is larger -- the set of all positive integers {1,2,3,4,5,...} or the set of all perfect squares {1,4,9,16,25,...}? Just looking at the first few members of each set and seeing, for instance, that 3 is a member of the first set but not a member of the second set, you'd probably assume that the set of all positive integers is larger than the set of all perfect squares.

You might notice, however, that each positive integer has exactly one perfect square: 1 squared is 1, 2 squared is 4, 3 squared is 9, etc. So every member of the set of positive integers has a corresponding member in the set of perfect squares that represents the perfect square of that integer. And since the definition of a perfect square is that it's the number that results from taking an integer and multiplying it by itself, there won't be any member of the set of perfect squares that doesn't have a corresponding member in the set of positive integers.

In other words, despite the fact that there are positive integers that aren't perfect squares, the set of all positive integers is exactly the same size as the set of all perfect squares.

Now *that's* weird.

--
Pauper

And I'm saying you're still wrong.

10^11 * 10^14 = 10^25

10^25 * 10^25 = 10^50


Still off by over 30 orders of magnitude.

Even if you jump up to 100 billion, you're still way off.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

YOU MADE THOSE WORDS UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i say this because i tried to pronounce one, my brain swelled to twice it's normal size, oozed out my ears and i fainted! no real word would do that....

maybe maud'Dib

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

This may be a question with no answer, not even a satisfactory metaphysical answer. Imagine a simulation of a universe with thinking beings in it. Now imagine the simulation is actually not being computed in real time, but is a recording of the simulation that is being played back. Then ask how it can be that the entities in the simulation can experience the flow of time if they are just static recordings that don't and can't change.

Experience itself might be relative. Here, its relative to the playback machine. In the physical universe, experience may be relative to the arrow of time, even if the universe itself is a static general relativistic manifold. In other words, we only experience time moving forward because that's the way cause and effect function within the rules of the universe, even if those rules in a sense have already played out.

Notice how hard it is to even express these concepts without referring to time. Its actually possible that the question "why do we experience the passage of time if time doesn't really pass?" is a meaningless question, because it asks why we perceive the passage of time if time itself doesn't elapse. Time can't elapse: time is the structure by which events elapse.

Put it another way: you might be asking a question that is tantamount to asking this question: how can we move, if we don't move the empty space out of the way? That's nonsensical, because empty space isn't a thing that needs to be moved out of our way. Time itself may not be a thing that needs to itself have a temporal frame of reference. Events pass, but time does not pass. Time can be static, and be the fabric within which events are said to be ordered. That ordering equals cause and event, and within that relative frame of reference we experience time flowing in one direction, the same direction as cause and effect.


Of course, there is another point to consider. We may experience time moving in only one direction simply because its impossible to experience it moving in any other direction. Suppose right now time reversed direction for an indeterminant amount of events. Then reversed again and moved forward. We couldn't perceive that, because as time reversed our memories would unwind and erase: our memories are a cause and effect process embedded in the universe: reversing time reverses those processes. So we can't remember time going backward, we can only remember it going forward. This might be a completely independent way in which "why do we experience time going forward only" may be a meaningless question. Experience itself may be something that can only occur in one direction. We cannot remember the future, so we can only perceive the past, and that's why we only experience time progressing in one direction. Experiencing the future as it becomes now *is* the only experience that can exist, so we're biased by cause and effect to only see things going in one direction. Cause and effect prevent us from ever seeing it the other way.


Mind bogglingly, one final way to look at it is to imagine that all versions of ourselves from every moment in time exist, but are trapped in that one instant of time. Each version of us only knows its own past and only perceives that one instant in time. The experience of time could be an illusion. It could be that no version of ourselves ever experiences time. There are an infinite number of versions of us, each with a *memory* of experiencing time *up to that point* but that memory is itself a construct. We would be like images in a flipbook, each one convinced it is experiencing time flowing, each one trapped on a single page, no two connected by anything in particular except for being in the same book.

S'why backwards time travel is pretty much impossible. Perfect analogy of the absurdity of what math tell us. Scarily enough, it's true.


You're delving into the sheer structural limits of the human mind and it's ability to comprehend scales. It's thoughts like this that always make me laugh at naysayers of the technological sort, who say that Ray Kurzweil is, to quote Dr. Cox: "wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.... wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong," which, of course, he pretty much has been right on the mark.

Humans are not designed, by our very evolution, to handle logarithmic increases, which shows up when dealing with technology growth and cosmic scales.

What's going to be really interesting is what will happen to our brain structure when we have to begin developing ways to perceive and handle vast pieces of information and mathematics. Obviously, the Singularity is a necessity if we ever want to see the branes outside our universes. Most likely, it will look much like "Event Horizon," which is bending spacetime, quantum flunctuations, or any other dimensional "things" to suit our needs.

You're using the word "space" in two senses: the colloquial sense and the physics sense. They are different. "Space" as it pertains to the universe and cosmology have a specific, if sometimes debatable definition. By definition "space" is all of the three dimensional space that exists. By definition there is no space outside of space, because any space outside of space would be just more space.

When cosmologists talk about expanding space, they are talking about the geometry of space. When space expands, points separated by a certain distance from each other get farther away. But the space doesn't have to expand into "more space." It has to expand into "something" if you want to think about it that way, but that something may not be anything like space as you know it.

When a balloon expands when you inflate it, the surface expands. But it doesn't expand into "more balloon" that was already there. The balloon itself got larger, and expanded "into" something that has nothing to do with the surface of the balloon itself. In the same sense, our three dimensional space can be expanding into a hypothetical fourth dimension, but that dimensional space would have nothing to do with our space. Its not a different kind of space we can just explore, any more than two-dimensional beings living on the surface of a balloon can just "go" into the third dimensional space their balloon universe is expanding into.

I like how you didn't talk about the shrunk down Calabi-Yau dimensions and referred to the "out there" as a fourth dimension, even though it is probably a fifth, sixth, etc.

You don't want to confuse people, Arcanaville.


EDIT: If anyone here needs a GOOD primer (I believe the best), pick up Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace." Read it when I was fourteen and it made me grasp metric tensors and cosmology. Get it on Kindle.

Or.....


are we?


*Scanners mind-blow*

You know I had to add a link for this. here

Nyah it's not because of the logarithmic scale thing. It's because of the fact that when we get there we will no longer be "individuals" but rather something like a super-super organism where in an individual will be like like a cell and their cells like atoms. That organism would have it's own wants and needs physically that we need even though we would want relatively nothing... but at that point in our existence we'd be "relatively" immortal making that organism immortal... the problem then is that this organism's only real need to exist is to locate energy and consume it to continue our existence, but at the same time at that point we're likely going to be able to manipulate universes and thus the creation and destruction of energy or the manipulation of it...meaning that purpose doesn't exist. The other purpose would be defense but there will likely be nothing to defend against as any "people" at that level would be fairly similar and have a similar view and more than likely merge together sharing their experiences and knowledge.

So at that point you have a crazy huge organism by our standards that has no real purpose in doing anything externally and thus it becomes "static" The result is that we either become so advanced and what has to occur at that level is so beyond us that we can't imagine it or there is nothing more and we just continue in our box... Or we become like amoeba or atoms or particles in some other huge universe above ours...

Both of which doesn't matter to us as individuals because all our needs and wants will be met via the internet and VR.... and VR we're not talking simple VR I'm talking incredible worlds with AI so advanced that it mimics or surpasses our current intelligence... which even with our ability to reason out and have access to information. The I that is me will likely evolve much slower mentally than the I that is my physical form. The I that is me will likely remain as we are and learn slowly over a vast amount of time...or at least a vast amount of time as perceived by me... and most of us will spend most of our times in game worlds or simulations of worlds or hub worlds where all the people you meet are "real" people...

From figuring that out you can go about figuring out that economy as it is already starting to take shape. It will be more or less what one might call a communistic world and the only real economic resources that any person will have is their processing power and their creativity as far as "real" economy goes, but not to worry capitalists...each world we create will likely be capitalistic because i imagine we'll be living in versions of star trek and star wars and City of Heroes and World of Warcraft because we like those types of worlds and find them fun. We might seek out new "worlds" by which I mean worlds created by those who can imagine new universes such as book authors. The more detailed the better most likely. The reason that will be is likely not to do with the ability to create simply by individuals but rather that ability in general and it not being very fun. Inhabiting a world where you control everything and if you don't like you can get rid of it would lead to a depressing eternity for many. That and I can't help but feel that even in that era creating realistic "people" done by someone who isn't very creative or by the system will create "mechanical" AI... so there might be markets where "people" are sold that are created by artists...

So yeah >.> it's not that we can't handle vast scales it's that when we get there we won't be there per say... and when I said we would be able to go there and back on a lark... I meant it because the "physical" world of us will not really exist. We'll have infrastructure and such that will allow the creation of femtocells at any given point that we will be able to inhabit and discard without much care. So that we can go from here to there to here with a thought because it is only matter of changing where "we" inhabit through instant data transfer stuff like quantum entanglement ^.^

I'm here.

The rest of you are all delusions of my insanity. I'm actually the last of humanity, sitting in the ruins of one of our cities and typing on a wrecked computer, running out the clock on life...

O.o