idiggory
idiggory t1_iwli3g7 wrote
Reply to comment by YourFatherUnfiltered in An unsuccessful search for aliens: Is the end of humanity inevitable? by That_Teach_9224
New global law: you can only post a fearmongering headline if you accept being publicly punched in the nose first, with video posted within the article.
idiggory t1_iwlhxtd wrote
Reply to comment by cabot-rose in An unsuccessful search for aliens: Is the end of humanity inevitable? by That_Teach_9224
In fairness, there have been very, very few attempts to actually move beyond this.
idiggory t1_ixejhfs wrote
Reply to Is space infinite or finite? by erkynator
The problem is that you're framing this in fundamentally impossible ways.
The universe is a system which is everything. All of spacetime as we are able to understand it is a part of the universe. And all of those parts we understand in relationship with other parts. The fabric of spacetime itself is relational to what exists.
So if the universe is finite, there may be points in space/time where no matter or energy is affected by anything, whatsoever, in certain four-dimensional directions. If you could stand on the exact edge of the universe, for one infinitesimally small moment of time, there would be nothing before your eyes. Truly nothing - no matter or energy which your senses or whatever tools you have could detect. For an infinitesimally small moment of time, there would be nothing "in front" of you. Which would then be utterly changed one infinitesimally small moment later, when energy had emitted into that space.
(Of course, the universe may also be curved, so even this might not be true, even if finite. There might be no "edge" even in this idea of an edge).
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Let me put it another way. We often think about the big bang as a central point from which matter/energy exploded from into space. Except that's not true. The big bang happened where I am. Where you are. Where someone 14 billion lightyears away is, if such a person exists.
The big bang wasn't an explosion into spacetime. It's the release of energy which created spacetime, because spacetime itself is an emergent property of the big bang. It's created by different forces which emerged following the big bang which influenced how the system was being expressed. Spacetime as we understand it did not exist "before" the big bang, because there was no "before" temporally speaking. For all we know, there's no before in terms of logical causation, either.