The Universe. It's big. I mean really, really, REALLY big!

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Tue May 25, 2004 1:32 pm

Turns out the Universe is about 156 Billion light years in diameter. This means it's around 1.911 x 10^22 cubic light years in volume.

Big huh?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/m ... 40524.html

suicide eddie · Post by **suicide eddie** » Tue May 25, 2004 2:08 pm

hmmm all that space and i still cant avoid the ex

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Tue May 25, 2004 4:48 pm

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Tue May 25, 2004 4:51 pm

3vil l33t · Post by **3vil l33t** » Tue May 25, 2004 5:34 pm

That's it? For some reason I thought it was bigger.

This here says 78 billion. Strange, seems to be the only news article that says that; all the rest say 156.

De Rigueur · Post by **De Rigueur** » Tue May 25, 2004 5:36 pm

3vil l33t wrote:That's it? For some reason I thought it was bigger.

This here says 78 billion. Strange, seems to be the only news article that says that; all the rest say 156.

78 must be the radius.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Tue May 25, 2004 7:07 pm

And in all that volume, we are the only intelligent life form

MehYam · Post by **MehYam** » Tue May 25, 2004 7:12 pm

Intelligent?

TheCops · Post by **TheCops** » Tue May 25, 2004 7:18 pm

suicide eddie wrote:hmmm all that space and i still cant avoid the ex

lol!

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Tue May 25, 2004 10:25 pm

We are certainly not the only one woodchip. In fact, we may not even rate as intelligent on a universal scale. More like monkeys, or dogs perhaps.

Repeat after me: Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.

Asrale · Post by **Asrale** » Tue May 25, 2004 11:17 pm

Haha Mobi, I bet Bush would love that logic to explain the WMD situation.

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Tue May 25, 2004 11:42 pm

Mobius wrote:We are certainly not the only one woodchip. In fact, we may not even rate as intelligent on a universal scale. More like monkeys, or dogs perhaps.

Repeat after me: Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.

Repeat after me:

Yes it is.

Right now, for all practical purposes, we are the only intelligent life in the universe.

Right now, for all practical purposes, there is no God.

Until we find God or aliens, they don't really exist.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Wed May 26, 2004 12:10 am

And the earth is still flat, and the sun revolves around the earth.

At 16 billion light years in size, there should be several billion galazies, right? Well, statistically, the rule of at least one should apply. What are the odds of our existence in this one galaxy? What if were the only intelligent life in this galaxy right now? WEll, given that our own existence as a statistical chance is mathematically insignificant, thats a definite possibility. However, stretch the same chance out across every star in every galaxy, the odds that AT LEAST ONE instance of intelligent life exists somewhere increases dramatically, to a point where there just HAS to be someone out there somewhere. The odds of there being no other intelligent life in a universe this size are so mathematically insignificant as to be unfathomably small.

Also, 16 billion light years is still smaller than some peoples egos. And thats sad.

Clayman · Post by **Clayman** » Wed May 26, 2004 12:21 am

Suncho wrote:
Mobius wrote:We are certainly not the only one woodchip. In fact, we may not even rate as intelligent on a universal scale. More like monkeys, or dogs perhaps.

Repeat after me: Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.
Repeat after me:

Yes it is.

Right now, for all practical purposes, we are the only intelligent life in the universe.

Right now, for all practical purposes, there is no God.

Until we find God or aliens, they don't really exist.

Suncho, does argumentum ad ignorantiam mean anything to you? Or does logic not exist either in your universe?

Ferno · Post by **Ferno** » Wed May 26, 2004 2:05 am

Suncho: my telephone number is absent from my profile. does that mean i don't have a telephone?

Also, if we're the only intelligent form of life in the universe, that would be an awfully big waste of space..

DigiJo · Post by **DigiJo** » Wed May 26, 2004 4:27 am

hmm the universe is 78 billion lightyears in diameter? if it started with the big bang, and most scientists say its 15 billion years old, how can it be 78 billion lightyears in diameter now? matter must have traveled with speeds much faster then lightspeed then.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Wed May 26, 2004 5:17 am

Digijo, you have to look at the radius to determine distance traveled.

DigiJo · Post by **DigiJo** » Wed May 26, 2004 5:48 am

thats right woodship. if we assume that the age of the universe is right with 15 billion years and the radius of the universe is 39 billion lightyears, then the matter on the outer border of the universe has traveled with 2.6 times the lightspeed all the time.

so either the big bang theory, the assumed age of the universe, or the assumed radius is wrong.

Flatlander · Post by **Flatlander** » Wed May 26, 2004 5:57 am

Yeah, so what about Fermi's question (if there's other intelligent life, than where are they?)

roid · Post by **roid** » Wed May 26, 2004 6:04 am

DigiJo wrote:hmm the universe is 78 billion lightyears in diameter? if it started with the big bang, and most scientists say its 15 billion years old, how can it be 78 billion lightyears in diameter now? matter must have traveled with speeds much faster then lightspeed then.

that's explained further at the end of the article.

basically, it's not just the universe expanding outward from the big bang, but also dimentional space itself (ie: physical reality as we know it).

so as space expands out, it carrys the universe with it, therefore breaking past the speed of light barrier yes, but it doesn't cause any problems because i guess lightspeed is a measurement relative to the dimentional space. there is no speed or time outside of space.
so dimentional space may be expanding, but to us it doesn't appear to be, coz we are part of that dimention. it's relative.
and i guess there isn't much to be relative to, when you're talking about "outside our dimention of space time"

.

ok stop me i'm starting to just make stuff up. hope my explanation wasn't too far off.

roid · Post by **roid** » Wed May 26, 2004 6:12 am

Flatlander wrote:Yeah, so what about Fermi's question (if there's other intelligent life, than where are they?)

i guess the possible explanations are:

1- they don't exist

3- they exist but havn't (yet) found us, for the same reasons we *as yet* havn't found them: technological limitation, or for reasons stated in (3).

3- they exist, know of our presense, but can't contact/reach us because they too are limited by the laws of space time, and they are too far away. ie: they are still comming, it's a long trip.

4- they exist but have chosen to keep their distance or ignore us.

(i had to beat mobi to this

)

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Wed May 26, 2004 6:36 am

roid - if it didn't appear to be expanding to us, how then do we know the universe has a radius of 78 billion light years and not 15 billion? I don't quite get that bit...

And yes, if it's answered there, I'm too lazy to read the article

snoopy · Post by **snoopy** » Wed May 26, 2004 6:41 am

what about 5) They have found us and the U.S. Govt. is hiding all evidence in a secret underground base under Roswell?

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Wed May 26, 2004 7:52 am

Or 6) They've already found us, and they're hiding on the dark side of the moon, waiting to kill us all

.

P.S. Suncho, I'm not even going to go into why your logic is flawed

.

DigiJo · Post by **DigiJo** » Wed May 26, 2004 8:21 am

we have sending tv, radio, and similar emission for ~70 years now into space. so possible technical emission from earth, a proof to a extraterrestian species for life here on this planet, has moved a maximum of 70 lightyears, and has passed only the suns within a sphere with the radius 70 lightyears. thats probably 10-20 solarsystems out of billions.

so if someone is watching us out of a system farer away then 70 lightyears, he sees only a dead ball of dirt with no life on it.

roid · Post by **roid** » Wed May 26, 2004 8:48 am

Sirius wrote:roid - if it didn't appear to be expanding to us, how then do we know the universe has a radius of 78 billion light years and not 15 billion? I don't quite get that bit...

And yes, if it's answered there, I'm too lazy to read the article

just skip to the end of it. it's the "update: i keep getting emails asking this very question!"

Diji i'm gonna count up the solarsystems within 70lightyears of SOL in celestia

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Wed May 26, 2004 8:58 am

roid decided now was a good time to BS when he wrote:Diji i'm gonna count up the solarsystems within 70lightyears of SOL in celestia

No you wont. You'll get bored and go play with a squishy moose or something.

roid · Post by **roid** » Wed May 26, 2004 8:58 am

wow, Diji you were pretty close. within 70lightyears of earth, there's 26 stars with orbiting planets that we know of (ie: 26 solarsystems)

phear my patience vader

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Wed May 26, 2004 9:02 am

Mobius wrote:In fact, we may not even rate as intelligent on a universal scale. More like monkeys, or dogs perhaps.

Mobius, where on God's green earth do you get your fantastic delusions? Someone's been watching to many sci-fi movies and reading to many evolution writings.

roid · Post by **roid** » Wed May 26, 2004 9:07 am

hmm, according to this the first radio signals were sent 108 years ago (1896).

108 light years from earth makes it 48-52 systems (ie: stars with orbiting planets) out there that could have picked up our signals.

if you take into account the time it would take for an answering signal to come back to us: that's only 13 planetary systems that we have currently contacted, and listened for a reply.

the closest planetary system to earth is 10light years away. which means (if they started replying right away) we would have recieved an answer signal from them in 1917.

we would have recieved an answer signal from the 2nd closest planetary system in 1926.
3rd: 1967
then in the 37years from 1967 to the present (2004) we've gone past the instant-reply deadlines for the next 9 closest planetary systems.

that was fun working that out.

[diji i edited and added a bunch of extra bits to this post probably after you had read it]

DigiJo · Post by **DigiJo** » Wed May 26, 2004 9:14 am

48-52 systems out of billions. guess we just have to wait a few million years until our calls ring a bell somewhere

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Wed May 26, 2004 11:00 am

156 billion light years? Doesn't sound all that infinite.

Thorne, do you really think that Humans could be in any running as far as intelligence is concerned? We're only a few points above animals. Only a minor percentage of the population is deemed even remotely intelligent. Most people only posess enough intellect to remember to take a shower every day.

Lothar · Post by **Lothar** » Wed May 26, 2004 11:21 am

At 16 billion light years in size, there should be several billion galazies, right? Well, statistically, the rule of at least one should apply. What are the odds of our existence in this one galaxy? What if were the only intelligent life in this galaxy right now? WEll, given that our own existence as a statistical chance is mathematically insignificant, thats a definite possibility. However, stretch the same chance out across every star in every galaxy, the odds that AT LEAST ONE instance of intelligent life exists somewhere increases dramatically, to a point where there just HAS to be someone out there somewhere. The odds of there being no other intelligent life in a universe this size are so mathematically insignificant as to be unfathomably small.

I like how you do statistics... "this is a small chance, and this other thing is a big number, so if we multiply them, we get a big numbar!!!!!"

Without actually knowing the numbers (or at least having some estimate of their relative magnitudes) you can't really say whether the chances are good or bad.

An example: there is a 1 in 4 billion chance of a person winning the lottery (small chance) but I come from a family of 10 (big number). Overall chance: NIL.

Another example: there is a 1 in 4 billion chance of randomly generating the binary sequence 1101 0010 1001 1110 0011 0111 0000 0101 with a random number generator (small chance) and I'm running 5000 computers generating 1,000,000 random numbers per second for 3 weeks (big number). Overall chance: good.

A third example: there is a 1 in 10^150 chance of randomly generating the base-10 sequence [insert 150-digit sequence here] (small chance) and I'm running 5000 computers generating 1,000,000 random numbers per second for 3 weeks (big number). Overall chance: NIL.

A fourth example: there is a 1 in 26^3000 chance of generating all the letters on a single page of shakespeare in the right order (no punctuation or capitalization, assuming 50 lines x 60 characters; small chance) and I have 10^6 monkeys each with a typewriter, and 10^6 years, and each monkey creates 10^6 characters per year, for a total of 10^18 characters (big number). Overall chance: NIL.

With respect to the current issue: we don't have a good estimate of the chance of life arising on a well-suited planet over time. We're working from a sample of size 1 -- you can't do statistics with a sample of size 1. All we can do is philosophize. We can estimate how many well-suited planets there are in the universe, but stretching an unknown probability across them... is not enlightening. It could be that the overwhelming chance is we're the only life in the universe; it could be that almost every planet suitable to life is inhabited. We simply can't estimate that from the numbers we have. All the million-monkey math in the world won't help us there.

Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Admiral Thrawn** » Wed May 26, 2004 11:25 am

yea, it's large, but traversing it will be no problem now that we have the Stargate in our possession.

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Wed May 26, 2004 11:45 am

Suncho wrote:
Mobius wrote:We are certainly not the only one woodchip. In fact, we may not even rate as intelligent on a universal scale. More like monkeys, or dogs perhaps.

Repeat after me: Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.
Repeat after me:

Yes it is.

Right now, for all practical purposes, we are the only intelligent life in the universe.

Right now, for all practical purposes, there is no God.

Until we find God or aliens, they don't really exist.

OMFG! I never thought I'd see the day that I agreed 100% with something Suncho posted / said....

I'm feeling ill now...

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Wed May 26, 2004 12:39 pm

Admiral Thrawn wrote:yea, it's large, but traversing it will be no problem now that we have the Stargate in our possession.

And this puppy too

(which has a bunch of these...)

I'm afraid the only alien life we've contacted is AceCombat, who's taken anal probing to a whole new level.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Wed May 26, 2004 2:38 pm

*groans*

{Hawk}Liquid · Post by **{Hawk}Liquid** » Wed May 26, 2004 6:02 pm

who the hell cares ?

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Wed May 26, 2004 7:36 pm

Everyone just re-read the title of the post. If we had sigs again, I know what I'd put in mine

.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Wed May 26, 2004 8:19 pm

is there a turn out at the edge of the universe for a view point? .. what is there to look at?