General question

[retiredmgn]

Being a group of generally smart people here I would like to throw out a couple of questions that I'm stumped on. It relates back to that tv show on quantum physics.
1. What's on the other side of infinity?
2. What was going on in the minutes just before the big bang?
This one is not as foolish as the first. We can measure, by the red shift, the universe is expanding. Which brings me back to the first question.

Just wondering how much gas I should line up for my tractor.
It appears we are in for a really long trip.

 

[hr3]

Hmm one ponders ..
The first of your questions the general consensus is that Black Holes would be the answer,,

Then you have the big bang.. The simple answer is that we do not know. All we can do is conjecture. Conditions just after the Big Bang were so extreme that we cannot test theories that purport to describe the first 10-43 seconds of the universe's existence. It follows, therefore, that we cannot even be sure about the Big Bang itself.

If anything did exist, or "was going on", prior to the Big Bang, we can never know for certain. There are various theories - the universe expanding from a quantum fluctuation, and a cyclic expansion and contraction to a Big Crunch to name but 2. No information from before the Big Bang (if there was any information then, or even if there was a "then") can ever reach us so it will forever remain in the realms of theory and supposition.

It will be interesting to see the next posts,,,

 

[ken4831]

Being a group of generally smart people here I would like to throw out a couple of questions that I'm stumped on. It relates back to that tv show on quantum physics.
1. What's on the other side of infinity?
2. What was going on in the minutes just before the big bang?
This one is not as foolish as the first. We can measure, by the red shift, the universe is expanding. Which brings me back to the first question.

Just wondering how much gas I should line up for my tractor.
It appears we are in for a really long trip.

1. Rapture of beleivers.
2. A elec. spark.

I purchase diesel in 55 gal. barrows and have purchased tractors cheaper than todays asking price.
But am not planning to return horse or mule to maintain the farm.
This past week have hauled to junk/salvage yard worn past the point of repair and old farm equiptment . 4000 lbs =200 bucks =1 barrow of diesel.
I agree it will be a long expensive trip. and the only group that will come out ahead live over seas.
ken

 

[om21braz]

1 - I suggest there is no other side to infinity, although there is a great gulf fixed.

2 - I also IMHO suggest to you, there was no "Big Bang". To believe that is to believe that order can come from chaos. It did not happen that way any more than an explosion of a huge box of alphabetical characters could create a Webster's dictionary.

 

[DAY]

"Time" is a human construct; "minutes/hours/days/years" are determined by the particular physics of our solar system, and have no meaning outside of it.

Mr. Einstein tells us that time and space are interrelated, as in the Time/Space Continuum. I believe some books are available on this topic.

 

[retiredmgn]

Thank you for thought provoking replies.
I remember a series on PBS authored by Carl Sagen. He coined the phrase, "billions and billions of stars". In one episode he talked of the 'flatlanders'. A society based in a two dimensional world. Inhabitants could go right, left, forward, backwards but had no concept of 'up'. One day a flatlander got knocked into the air and for the first time experienced a view of Flatland from the air. Needless to say his story was mocked by those who had not experienced 'up'.
An interesting parable to what might happen to us 3 dimensional characters if we were given a chance to see something 'else'.
I'm locked in time and space to the point I have to believe there is a road sign, "Caution, you have reached the end of eternity. Pass at your own risk"

Road trip. :confused2:
:thumbsup:

 

[Chuck52]

The universe, and infinity, are clearly mobius constructs; there are no other sides.

Chuck

 

[KPark]

Seeing as breaking up matter produces large amounts of energy, and conversely, creating matter consumes a large amount of energy, then exactly what is it that exists between the two forms and was that the state of the known universe (infinite gravity negates passage of time) until some sort of upset blew the whole equilibrium and created what we now know? In other words, time was only a construct that started as a result of the "Big Bang", and the "what was before" will have to wait until our understanding reaches deeper into universal laws.

 

[retiredmgn]

The universe, and infinity, are clearly mobius constructs; there are no other sides.

Chuck[/QUOTE

I hadn't run into this word, "mobius". Wasn't in my dictionary, had to Google it. Interesting. At first glance this appears to be Einstien's 'Space is curved philosophy'. My problem with that is it maintains a three dimensional view. Keep going long enough and you'll come back to where you started.
There's something else going on here. Several have mentioned black holes. These seem a good jumping off point. We know they are there. They are observalble and measurabel. The bit about light not not being to exit is suspect - if you havn't been there how would you know?
I once read if you were in a spaceship and entered a black hole you would be traveling at the speed of light. However, to an observer you would be forever poised at the lip of the black hole. That's heddy stuff but approachable. Faster you go the more time slows. Proven with atomic clocks aboard jets.

 

[groundcover]

1. Not sure but it must be greener ! Talk about the other side of the fence !

2. Two aliens had just said " hold my beer and watch this " !

 

[EE_Bota]

My shot, without reading any other replies:
1)There is no other side of infinity. Infinity is infinite. If we choose to confuse near infinity with actual infinity, then all bets are off.
2)Minutes are fragile things. Time is mostly conceived by humans due to our feeble state, which consists of taking in energy in higher forms, and using some for our own purposes, and wasting the rest. If we were not bound to this thermodynamic truth regarding our existence, we probably would not have conceived of time to begin with.

Hawking in his book "A Brief History of Time" brings up two or more "arrows" of time which, and it has been years, but one was cosmological and one was thermodynamic.

"Before the big bang" would be before either arrow of time, such that we would understand them. As an observer, where are you? One can conceive thought experiments to solve practical problems without resorting to full blown calculations, but all such experiments I have ever conceived allow for me, to observer, to exist somewhere. You, as an observer, were either in the pre-Big Bang singularity, such that you can report what time looked like (very unlikely) or you were not in existence at all, since there is no place to be outside the Big Bang singularity.

What happened before the big bang is presumed by me to be a nonsensical question, but by no means a dumb question. But, just as I think I have a grasp, I will read something different which seems to indicate I have no real clue.

 

[Transit]

Infinity does not have a side. The concept of infinity is more mathematical than physical. Wright the largest number you can think of and it can be exceeded by adding 1 to it and than that number can be exceeded by adding 1, in short infinity comes to mean, without bound. There are other adaptations of infinity to ponder about too.

Current investigations show that the universe is expanding, the edge of the universe has not been found. There is a lot of matter missing [dark matter], one would expect that at some point gravitational forces between galaxies would stop the expansion and start a contraction but the matter is not there [Hubble]. Research in the inferred and ultraviolet spectrums shows a whole new universe. What happens to the matter in a Black Hole? With the new telescopes it is seen that there are jets of energy shooting out of the Black Hole. [ EM= C squared] Each new telescope finds something new and all the models have to be updated to account for what was not known. Each new answer generates a thousand new questions.

As for the big bang, we know to the micro second the state of things after the bang, nothing before that point. Was it a one time event or has it occurred before? How many times?

BTW, Carl Sagen is obsolete.

 

[s78wingrider]

Out there goes on Forever! Know how far that is :confused2: :laughing: :ashamed:

 

[LD1]

2. Two aliens had just said " hold my beer and watch this " !

Thats probabally the best theory I have heard:drink::laughing:

On a seriouis note, I really dont have much to add to what has already been said. But I can tell you that this sort of thing really intrests me. I really get into the shows on discovery and science channel that talk about these sorts of things.

My personal belief is that right before the big bang, there was a big crunch, and that this is not the first time it has happened. I have no facts to back that up, it is just what makes the most sense to me.

But I am sure we'll figure it out in the future. Just look at how far technology has advanced in the last 50 years, or in the last 10?? And that is really just a blink of the eye in the grand scheme of things.

And I also believe in intelligent life out there as well. No I am not a UFO and conspiracy theory guy, but with BILLIONS of other galaxies, not to mention we havent found the "edge" yet, we would be naive to we are the only ones in the universe.

 

[Chuck52]

Only Doug Adams could answer all these questions, and he passed on without revealing the real, true answer.

Chuck

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Only Doug Adams could answer all these questions, and he passed on without revealing the real, true answer.

Chuck

One of the best jokes ever. When Deep Thought finally came up with the answer, everyone had forgotten the question. They finally figured it out, but got the question wrong.

 

[Deere Dude]

Being a group of generally smart people here I would like to throw out a couple of questions that I'm stumped on. It relates back to that tv show on quantum physics.
1. What's on the other side of infinity?
2. What was going on in the minutes just before the big bang?
This one is not as foolish as the first. We can measure, by the red shift, the universe is expanding. Which brings me back to the first question.

Just wondering how much gas I should line up for my tractor.
It appears we are in for a really long trip.

I'm sure the answer is in those posts someplace, but I want to throw something out someone alluded to before.
There was no big bang. Everything that was made had to have something or someone that caused it. Everything that was made and has a design has to have a designer. That is for the earth and everything in the universe and even to everything on the earth including humans. We can see that just from looking at the new developments of DNA. It is not some random molecules floating around.

Just take a bunch of tiny little gears and throw them in a bucket and shake it up and out comes an operating watch. It would never happen. A watch would have to have a design just as the earth and the universe has a design.

If we would want to say that all these things happened without a designer and if everything just happened randomly, then life would have to come from rocks. The consciousness would have to come from something that had no consciousness. Then the conscience that humans have would have to come from something that had no conscience. We would have to prove that intelligence would have to come from something that has no intelligence and then human beings would have to come from something that was not human. All of these things are far-fetched if we try to prove man came from some random bang or crunch or whatever.

Then we would have to explain evolution of some sort. We could say that man came from a tadpole or a chicken or whatever and we would say that is stupid, but then we say it took 300,000,000 years and then all of a sudden we think its possible. That makes no sense.
Where is the missing link? There isn't any.

Besides that, if man evolved from some lesser physical entity as some say, there would have to have two or more evolving at the same time to make a mating pair. That is ridiculous.
If man was without a heart or a lung or a nervous system or any other bodily systems, he would last about a minute before he was dead without any one of them. Not quite long enough to evolve from or into anything.
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God
God is eternal. He always was and always is going to be in existence.
We are looking for answers from these cranks on TV that don't have a clue about the beginning when the real explanation is sitting right on our table, being the Bible, and its a whole lot easier to understand than trying to decipher quantum physics.
It simply says God created the heavens and the earth and then the rest of the Bible goes into showing what we have to do to benefit from that. :thumbsup:

 

[Sigarms]

I don't have the answer to your questions, but I'd like to think that we will (have all have the answers) when we're 6' under.

 

[om21braz]

The sad part is that some of the brightest minds are searching for answers to questions such as these and there are questions about things right here that can be touched, felt and seen with the naked eye that they have no answer for.

 

[Patriotic Stabilist]

We may never get a chance to find out. One of the theories about 2012 is that the earth will experience a pole shift and when it does everything on the surface of the earth will be wiped off. I was watching a program about it the other evening, some builder was being commissioned by the ultra rich to build these huge underground shelters to keep them safe during it. But it was funny because the guy didn't believe in it himself and wasn't even building one for him. Anyway, from what I've read its happened quite a few times already so they say and they said it generates winds of 400mph and more and nothing can withstand it.

All these theories are just beyond mind boggling to me. But wouldn't it be sad that mans knowledge could be wiped out and have to start all over again.