DescentBB

[glad to be back on topic ]

Bet51987 wrote:...we aren't going to agree on why God needed a universe of ungodly proportions when everthing about the bible is earth centered...

Bet, I understood your argument when you talked about it in terms of God intentionally limiting human reach. You asked the question, "Why would God create physical limits on our exploration (e.g. relativistic limits like the speed of light)?", and that's a good question in my book.

However, your argument above still baffles me. Why do you believe the Bible (God's relationship to humanity) being Earth-centered implies anything about God's relationship to the rest of the universe? Do you believe that the Bible says God cannot be concerned with or care about anything outside humanity and the Earth? Or is it something else?

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P.S. "ungodly proportions" I like that.

we still have NO IDEA how the vastness of the Universe interacts, we learn more and more about it every day. who are we to say that the size of the universe isnt required to maintain life anywhere in any fashion?? it is our own Human arrogance to think its all about us and our limitations.

some impossible barriers broken

the speed of sound is impossible to break.
a piston engine cannot propel a car faster than 180 MPH.
the speed of Light can never be broken.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Two_German_ ... d_of_light

maybe its true maybe its not Time will tell just like with all the other unbreakable speed limits

CUDA wrote:http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Two_German_ ... d_of_light

maybe its true maybe its not Time will tell just like with all the other unbreakable speed limits

Heh, I've seen that claim quoted a number of times.

What people fail to understand is that it's simply "quantum tunnelling", a phenomenon where light passes a "potential barrier" which would seem to require more momentum than light has at c. The phenomenon was predicted a long time ago by the wave equations in quantum mechanics, and casting it as "Scientists break the laws of physics!" is really inaccurate.

well its all above my pay grade. what I do know is that the other instances that I cited were deemed physically impossible to surpass at one time. yet we did.
and with what we currently know about speed limitiations and our current tech we are viewing it the same way. maybe there is a physical limit to how fast we can travel I don't know. but I tend to believe that we will some day break that barrier also. and if other races have Visited earth, as there is \"some evidence\" no matter how shakey to suggest that \"might\" be true. then there is no possible way they could have reached us unless they traveled faster than light, or spent generations in the journey

All limits are based on barriers or restrictions, remove them and…Poof

Foil wrote:Why do you believe the Bible (God's relationship to humanity) being Earth-centered implies anything about God's relationship to the rest of the universe?

It doesn't. And that's my problem. Everything about the bible is Earth-centered because the bible writers knowledge consisted of that one grain of sand and the ceiling of stars above them. In their wildest dreams they couldn't possibly have imagined the billions of trillions of grains occupying the same universe as Earth. So, did the God who spoke to Moses about His awesome creativeness conveniently leave that out? Or,is it because the humans who created God wrote about everything they knew?.

Please remember that when someone in church talks to me about Jesus, which is often, I make them feel good. I would never ever take God away from them because of my personal belief.

CUDA wrote:we still have NO IDEA how the vastness of the Universe interacts, we learn more and more about it every day. who are we to say that the size of the universe isnt required to maintain life anywhere in any fashion?? it is our own Human arrogance to think its all about us and our limitations.

some impossible barriers broken

the speed of sound is impossible to break.
a piston engine cannot propel a car faster than 180 MPH.
the speed of Light can never be broken.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Two_German_ ... d_of_light maybe its true maybe its not Time will tell just like with all the other unbreakable speed limits

I've never considered searching for the truth as being arrogant although I do know some hard line theists and hard line atheists that do. Also, my specfic argument about the size of the universe had everything to do with the bible God and nothing to do with other life forms that I firmly believe exist. I just wanted to clarify that.

I've never read anywhere where reputable scientists ever believed that sound was an impassable barrier. The laws of physics allowed for it along with the car and bullets fired from guns already broke it. However, those same laws do not allow for anything with mass to travel faster than 670,000,000 miles per hour. These aren't laws that someone made up, these are mathematical equations that have been proven by the greatest minds of each decade.

As an example, if we want to give up light speed then we have to throw out E=MC2 and if we get rid of E=MC2, then the atomic bomb didn't work.

Bettina

hehe.. if you \"got rid\" of E=MC2 it would most likely be replaced by a better model. Most of what we call laws are really \"working theory\". That is, they fit MOST situations and do fine, but say for instance a quantum level situation a \"law\" breaks down. does that mean it's ALL wrong? of course not. But there are still many things (as well you know) that aren't understood. As quantum physics continues, I'm sure there are principles that are yet to be discovered. Math is not perfect or 100% exact (in an abstract sense) so there are times and places number models won't work like they should.

(man I love talking over my head! ) ...wanna raise Cuda??? (work for the feds! )

Duper wrote:hehe.. if you "got rid" of E=MC2 it would most likely be replaced by a better model.

I think Albert is speaking to me.

Bee

Bettina wrote: so I just rest my case as you will rest yours.

Consider it rested. And thank you for the very engaging discussion!

Cuda wrote:what I do know is that the other instances that I cited were deemed physically impossible to surpass at one time. yet we did.

Spidey wrote:All limits are based on barriers or restrictions, remove them and...Poof

Bettina is right on this one. The sound barrier and the other examples mentioned are completely different KIND of barrier. They were only engineering problems.

Just imagine that you are speaking to a scientist in 1902. You ask two questions:
1: Will man ever travel faster than sound.
2: Is there any way to make time pass at different rates for two different people.

The answer to 1 might have been no. But it would have been phrased as an engineering problem. Scientist KNEW that bullets and even bullwhips move faster than the speed of sound. The question was could we ever build something powerful enough to send a MAN that fast, and could he survive it? Going faster than the speed of sound was POSSIBLE, but perhaps out of man's reach.

But the answer to number 2 would be an entirely different KIND of no. It wouldn't be, "I don't think we can build something to do that", it would have been, "The universe doesn't ALLOW that!" Time is an absolute and so its NOT an engineering problem. No amount of clever inventing can overcome a physical law. The only way around it is IF you discover some loophole or extension of the physical laws that allow a way around the problem. And whether such laws exist is NOT subject to your cleverness. If they don't, you won't find them no matter how long or hard you search.

In the case of question 2, the change in our understanding of the universe DID come about when Einstein published his theory of general relativity. Newtonian physics was still true, but it was not complete, and time was NOT absolute. With the discovery of this new "law", the problem of varying time became an engineering problem. And it took us many years to overcome that engineering problem, in even a small way, but we HAVE managed to perform experiments where we made time pass differently for different clocks.

The light speed barrier is like problem number 2, variable time, NOT problem number 1, the sound barrier. Unless we discover that loophole or expansion of physical law, no amount of engineering will allow us to bypass the light speed barrier. We MIGHT discover such a loophole, but there is no guarantee of that.

Kilarin, did you happen to watch the episode of The Universe on this exact subject? Maybe you should explain breaking the light speed barrier is impossible to some of the best minds in science, so they can stop wasting their time.

Spidey wrote:Maybe you should explain breaking the light speed barrier is impossible to some of the best minds in science, so they can stop wasting their time.

No, I did NOT say it is impossible, I said it is not within our current understanding of physics. It's impossible unless we discover loopholes in the laws.

I'll clarify that with "Outside of Quantum effects".

Quantum Tunneling and "spooky interactions at a distance" do some really strange things that we haven't quite figured out yet. Also, recent studies imply that there are ways to increase the speed of light in certain mediums. For example, it's possible to create a "super vacuum" by placing two sheets of aluminum foil so close together that they block out the vacuum fluctuations. Theory implies that the speed of light may actually be slightly FASTER in this "super vacuum".

Quantum effects are one of the things that imply there may be loopholes around the light barrier. MAY. We really just don't understand how to integrate quantum mechanics and relativity yet. I hesitate to draw any conclusions based on quantum effects since, while we can predict them mathematically, we are completely clueless as to what is really going on.

So, to repeat, I do NOT think that violating the speed of light is necessarily impossible, but if it IS possible, it will require a new breakthrough in physics to explain it.

Spidey wrote:Kilarin, did you happen to watch the episode of The Universe on this exact subject? Maybe you should explain breaking the light speed barrier is impossible to some of the best minds in science, so they can stop wasting their time.

That was a great episode. It even stated light speed was really pokey when compared to the vastness of space. Here is a good article for you Physicists Slow Speed of Light

If God created the universe would he not have created other lifeforms in the universe? Seem like a waste of space to me. If there is no God maybe he was a scientist that used genetic engineering to create Adam then used more genetic engineering to clone Adam to make Eve. Which would mean there is life out there.

I have met the Martians and they are us.

I think its very possible to travel faster than C and thus enable us to travel in time and space.

I believe part of the picture is this experiment in Japan with rotating Gyros;
Big link eaten by little link

Along with this are more recent confirmations in this field that spinning mercury infused with paramagnetic particles on edge with crystal lattice, but I'm having trouble finding links on the latest greatest experiment. But found this instead;
http://www.voltairenet.org/article159381.html

Canuck, that anti-gravity stuff (and related claims of breaking relativistic limits) is firmly in the same realm as cold fusion and other pseudo-science. It started years ago, but none of the results have been consistently reproduced, virtually all of them claim to break known laws of physics through complex gyros or some kind of superconductor, and the sites that tout them rely on "Area 51"-ish claims about secret military work, like the site you linked:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article159381.html wrote:Classified antigravity technologies have been kept from the public realm for over six decades while secretly developed by military-corporate entities.

Follow it if you want, but you should be aware that there are good reasons those claims have never produced anything verifiable. (And not because of some secret government cover-up, lol.)

The Universe is full of elements and physics we don't have a clue about, and what we do know of it just scratches the surface. Don't poo-poo things outright because you don't have the knowledge of. Anti-gravity exists... These guys want to try and do it with antimatter and there has been recent discoveries of chemical-nuclear reactions... cold fusion may be a reality or has opened the door to new forms of low energy nuclear reactions. Explain what is happening here?

Just have to wonder if it really works though or if it's real. Cold fusion that is.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/2 ... usion.html

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/02 ... fe-article

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html

Canuck wrote:Anti-gravity exists...

The folks on the fringe of science OCCASIONALLY turn out to be right. But only very occasionally. They usually turn out to be very, very mistaken, or outright liars.

So, while I won't dismiss anti-gravity out of hand, I'm not the least bit convinced by any of the so called "evidence" I've been shown. Everything points against it, and historically, almost every previous claim has been proven false. It's INTERESTING, but not convincing.

Saying that "anti-gravity" exists for certain from what we have here is certainly as foolish as claiming that any kind of anti-gravity force is absolutely impossible.

Anti-gravity may be nice if you happen to be at a place where gravitational forces exert significant amounts of effect, but how useful could it possibly be in interstellar space?

God grants angels anti-gravity. <----- just to remain on topic.

The big difference between traveling faster than light and producing cold fusion is that according to the laws of physics the latter is theoretically possible and that's why some scientists are still experimenting. But from what little I've read about it, something is happening but on a very small scale and I have to wonder even if it happens will they ever be able to scale it up to produce something practical? It would be \"cool\" if they did. I wouldn't mind a small \"Mr. Fusion\" being in the trunk of my car.

Light speed, however, is something much different because the laws of physics don't allow it and there is proven evidence as to what happens when matter approaches light speed. Not one reputable scientist is pursing the possibility of a carbon based life form exceeding the speed of light and the few people who make the claim of it's possibility never have any math, of any kind, to back it up. It's just pure speculation without purpose.

Bee

That’s funny considering…

1. Cold Fusion is also not possible according to the laws of physics.*
2. There are just as many or more people trying to break the speed of light.**

*True “Fusion” not just some chemical reaction, with a bogus name.
**And on the ironic side…your favorite physicist. Kaku

.....................

NOTE…it is my belief that some are confusing “Cold Fusion” with the regular “Fusion”.

Spidey,

Like I said, I don't know much about cold fusion except that the physics people say it's possible so I need a link from you.

As far as light speed... Kaku really is my favorite and I have, and read, all his books on everything from parallel universes to wormholes but theoretical physicists are just that...theoretical. However, he also has a realistic side and in his book he states the following:

\"While intersteller travel for our civilization is clearly impossible, it may be possible for other civilizations centuries to thousand or millions of years ahead of ours.\"

Note where he says \"clearly impossible\". That's because he knows how our universe operates and the limitations imposed on human beings. His books try to deal with work arounds to at least send information.

When he talks about \"other civilizations\" he means from another universe that operates under different laws. You should buy some of his books. He's awesome.

Bee

Bet51987 wrote:When he talks about "other civilizations" he means from another universe that operates under different laws. You should buy some of his books. He's awesome.

Bee

Thats not what he says per your quote of him. he talks about years advanced not an another Universe. what his comment says is based on WHAT WE CURRENTLY KNOW, that FTL travel is not possible and that in the future that could change.

If a different set of physical laws can exist in another \"universe\", they could exist here as well. LMAO at that, it makes me wonder if I'm getting shorted in my meds.

CUDA wrote:

Bet51987 wrote:When he talks about "other civilizations" he means from another universe that operates under different laws. You should buy some of his books. He's awesome.

Bee

Thats not what he says per your quote of him. he talks about years advanced not an another Universe. what his comment says is based on WHAT WE CURRENTLY KNOW, that FTL travel is not possible and that in the future that could change.

Sorry, you're right. He meant our future civilizations and what we currently know. I have another book where he talks about the multiverse where other universes could operate under different laws. I had that in mind. Either way, he knows what the laws are now and he likes to speculate about the future. So do I.

Bee

I'll point you HERE why a multi-verse is a silly notion.

Bee, I could give you links to sites against Cold Fusion, but instead I offer you the chance to give me the formula for fusing atomic nuclei at room temperatures. (don’t bother, there is none )

The fusion of atomic nuclei requires tremendous heat and pressure. If it didn’t it would happen all the time, and the galaxies would either fall apart or form into one big blob, all by them selves.

Think about it, even if you could remove the heat from the process, the pressure then needed would be magnitudes greater than with the heat, and there would be no way to maintain such pressures on earth, not to mention that much pressure would create heat anyway, defeating the purpose.

Cold Fusion was a HOAX…get over it.

Are you very sure you are not thinking of normal hot fusion?

Duper wrote:I'll point you HERE why a multi-verse is a silly notion.

He's not attacking the idea of a multiverse. He's attacking Rob Bryanton's pseudo-scientific conception of a multiverse. (He throws some stuff about time paradoxes in there for some reason too.)

Although Bryanton's conception of a multiverse is pseudo-scientific, the guy in that video makes some poor arguments too. For instance, he makes the same mistake that people who try to disprove God make by attempting to show that omnipotence is paradoxical. They say that God can't can't create a boulder so large that he couldn't lift it. But this kind of argument arises by misunderstanding the scope of what people mean by omnipotence. Most people mean it to be being able to do anything physically possible, but not being able to do anything logically impossible, where creating a boulder so large that an omnipotent being couldn't lift it represents such a logical impossibility.

That guy in the video makes the same mistake by not considering the scope of "anything" when he introduces his ubermonster thing. When anything is possible in a universe in a multiverse, what is actually allowed to vary and what is not? It seems like you could trivially fix the problem of the ubermonster destroying the other universes by saying that all universes are always physically independent, and hold this as a constant. So now the ubermonster cannot destroy any other universes.

The guy in the video even hints at this solution when he says that, according to the theory that he is criticizing, that all physical laws can vary. This raises the question, "What counts as a physical law?" and can one include the ability to destroy another universe as one of these?

Of course, like God, multiverses are, at least at this point, a very metaphysical discussion, which is why disproving them is as difficult as proving them.

Spidey wrote:Bee, I could give you links to sites against Cold Fusion, but instead I offer you the chance to give me the formula for fusing atomic nuclei at room temperatures. (don’t bother, there is none )

The fusion of atomic nuclei requires tremendous heat and pressure. If it didn’t it would happen all the time, and the galaxies would either fall apart or form into one big blob, all by them selves.

Think about it, even if you could remove the heat from the process, the pressure then needed would be magnitudes greater than with the heat, and there would be no way to maintain such pressures on earth, not to mention that much pressure would create heat anyway, defeating the purpose.

Cold Fusion was a HOAX…get over it.

Are you very sure you are not thinking of normal hot fusion?

I don't know enough to argue with you except that I'm not throwing in the towel....yet. Too many scientists believe it's possible and something strange is going on. Check out this link. (I get this magazine mailed to me every week.)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... -cold.html

However, I can't give on light speed. I can't even imagine a new physics that would throw out something that has already been proven. Kaku even admits that but has hopes that something new will come up but it's pure speculation and nothing else.

Duper... That video was awful and I agree with Jeff250. The multiverse I've read about are just other universes that, although physically connected to ours, remain separate. Think soap bubbles. We live in one of those bubbles.

Bee

Spidey wrote:The fusion of atomic nuclei requires tremendous heat and pressure. If it didn’t it would happen all the time, and the galaxies would either fall apart or form into one big blob, all by them selves.

What law of physics dictates that fusion can only happen under tremendous heat and pressure? Thats where we've observed it, but that does NOT equal a law of physics. The fact that cold fusion is not happening all the time does NOT exclude the possibility that it COULD happen, since the situation required for it to happen might be unusual.

Your argument here is akin to saying that fission chain reactions do not happen because we've never seen it happen and if atoms could fall apart and cause other atoms to fall apart in a chain reaction, everything would have blown up by now.

This argument would have sounded pretty good if you presented it back in, say, the 30's. But there was no fundamental law of physics that said chain reactions couldn't happen. Turns out they can.

Cold fusion may very well be impossible, but it is a fundamentally different problem, a whole different KIND of problem than traveling faster than the speed of light. Bypassing the speed of light requires finding a loophole in the rules the universe operates by. We do NOT know that this is the case with cold fusion.

Bettina wrote:That video was awful and I agree with Jeff250. The multiverse I've read about are just other universes that, although physically connected to ours, remain separate. Think soap bubbles. We live in one of those bubbles.

I thought it was funny. But you and Jeff250 are both right. Most of the conundrums addressed in the vid were related to the problem of having an INFINITE and unlimited multiverse. A finite (or strictly limited) multiverse avoids those issues.

On Time Travel, I like Larry Niven's argument. If it is possible to create a time machine that enables you to change your own past, then logic dictates that no such machine will ever be used.

Consider, any timeline that DOES result in the building of a time machine AND USES that time machine to alter its own past, will wipe itself out. Butterfly Effect, Chaos theory, etc.

The odds of any particular sperm reaching a particular ovum are astronomically small. Alter any tiny event in the timeline and you get different people being born. If Thomas Lincoln stumbles slightly on the way home one critical evening, a different sperm ends up getting to Sarah's ovum that night, and Sally Lincoln is born instead of Abraham Lincoln. That change, of course, spreads rapidly, and within a relatively short amount of time the odds become tiny that ANY individual born in the old timeline still exists in the new.

It's like weather. It all follows SOMEWHAT predictable rules on the macro level, but change the air pressure by one stroke of a butterfly's wings, and in a few years, the weather will be completely different.

SO, if any timeline that alters itself automatically eliminates itself. It eliminates the time machine (or it's use). Evolution dictates that the timeline will continue to stay in flux until a timeline arises in which no one uses a time machine to alter the timeline. THAT timeline will be stable.

Note, all based on the assumption that you can alter YOUR OWN timeline. Multiverse timetravelling is unrelated.

I disagree Jeff. I think he understands the term "infinite" reather well. Whenever you tag that term onto anything that is and should be finite, things get absurd in the fullest sense of the word. I think that we as humans tend to limit within our minds what infinity is.. as in "mostly infinite" but we stop like 15 yards of the goal. Thus we come up with ideas like the multiverse. ...but I digress from the topic. Drakona and I had an interesting discussion on the topic last year. Had to do with Monkeys and typewritters.

Jeff250 wrote: Of course, like God, multiverses are, at least at this point, a very metaphysical discussion, which is why disproving them is as difficult as proving them.

That I'll agree with.

Kilarin wrote:On Time Travel, I like Larry Niven's argument. If it is possible to create a time machine that enables you to change your own past, then logic dictates that no such machine will ever be used.

Well if you build a machine wouldn't you only be able to travel back as far as the machine were first turned on.

What about the paradoxes that go along with time travel.

Michio Kaku wrote:One stubborn problem with time travel is that it is riddled with several types of paradoxes. For example, there is the paradox of the man with no parents: What happens when you go back in time and kill your parents before you are born? If your parents died before you were born, then how could you have been born to kill them in the first place?

There is also the paradox of the man with no past. For example, let’s say that a young inventor is trying futilely to build a time machine in his garage. Suddenly, an elderly man appears from nowhere and gives the youth the secret of building a time machine. The young man then becomes enormously rich playing the stock market, race tracks, and sporting events because he knows the future. Then, as an old man, he decides to make his final trip back to the past and give the secret of time travel to his youthful self. Where did the idea of the time machine come from?

This is a nice read.

Insurrectionist wrote:Well if you build a machine wouldn't you only be able to travel back as far as the machine were first turned on.

All depends on how you define your time machine.

Since they are fantasy machines, you can make them work anyway you want. In J. P. Hogan's novel "Thrice upon a time", you can only send back messages through time, and only back as far as when the machine was turned on. Any changes in the timeline are not paradoxes because the original timeline still happened, it's just be overwritten with the new one now.

In Connie Willis' "Doomsday Book" time machines can send you back to before the machine was made, BUT, she has an interesting system for avoiding paradoxes. The time machine must form a "circuit" in time. If your traveling back to a certain place and a certain time would cause the time machine to not be created, then it can't form the "circuit" and can't open up the door for you to go back in time. Try somewhere else or somewhen else.

And, perhaps my favorite approach, Larry Niven's "The Flight Of The Horse". A time machine will send you back in time as far as you wish to go. BUT, since time machines are actually fantasy, you end up in fantasy universes.

Kilarin, what do you mean “observed”? We have “created” Fusion! The hydrogen Bomb obeys the laws of physics, does it not? BTW, the same laws Bee claims to prevent faster than light travel.

And your analogy stinks.

You can win this debate by demonstrating a “working” formula…It really wouldn’t be that hard, if it were possible, within the current laws.

Spidey wrote:Kilarin, what do you mean “observed”? We have “created” Fusion!

Yes. We've also created fusion in many other circumstances. But I'm not certain what distinction you are trying to draw between observing something that happens naturally and observing something that is produced artificially.

Spidey wrote:The hydrogen Bomb obeys the laws of physics, does it not?

Absolutely. A Gas MASER obeys the laws of physics just fine. If you had asked Townes (the man who invented the first gas Maser) how to build a diode based Laser, his answer would have probably been, "I don't know, I don't even know if its possible"

The fact that light (and microwaves) can be produced as coherent beams using energized gas, didn't prove that you can't create coherent light using a solid state device. Actually, it doesn't even prove that you can't create coherent light using some method other than stimulated emission.

Spidey wrote:And your analogy stinks.

Does the Laser analogy work better?

Spidey wrote:You can win this debate by demonstrating a “working” formula…It really wouldn’t be that hard, if it were possible, within the current laws.

But I don't know if its possible or not. I lean against actually. I CERTAINLY don't know how hard it would be to achieve. Back to the Laser example for that one. Producing diode Lasers was NOT easy.

What I've said is we do not KNOW that cold fusion violates any laws of physics. You've said that the laws of physics dictate that fusion REQUIRES great amounts of heat and pressure. Which laws?

To try and illustrate the difference I am speaking about: If someone tells me that have found a cheap and easy way to produce anti-matter out of old gym socks and cheeseburgers, I'm going to be VERY skeptical, but wont insist that it breaks the laws of physics.

If someone tells me they have built a machine that creates more energy than it consumes, I'm going to say "Not unless you've discovered a hole in the second law of thermodynamics."

If we discovered the first case (antimatter from gym socks and cheeseburgers) to be true, I'd certainly be surprised, but it wouldn't necessarily require the rewriting of any laws of physics.

But if the second case were proven, (someone built an over-unity device). Then we WOULD have to modify our understanding of the basic laws that govern the universe.

The are two very different kinds of problems. Either one can be overcome, but the second is much more difficult and more far reaching in it's overall impact on our knowledge.

Duper wrote:Whenever you tag that term onto anything that is and should be finite, things get absurd in the fullest sense of the word.

Kilarin wrote:A finite (or strictly limited) multiverse avoids those issues.

I guess it depends what you mean by issues. The so-called paradoxes that that guy introduced are trivially fixed, even with infinite universes. (Compare the set of all integers with the set of all even integers--both are infinite.) I can just say that the ability to destroy other universes isn't a possible "physical law." And that's something that's not only possible but also seems intuitive, not that being unintuitive is necessarily a problem (see below).

This guy did make quite a few appeals to intuition that can only be "resolved" with a finite multiverse, and perhaps this is what you're referring to. I suppose that there could be some universe where "I" am galactic overlord (although this raises issues of personal identity, i.e. whether such a person could ever still be called "me"). But, again, at best, all you've done here is shown that an infinite multiverse is unintuitive or "weird." But since science has a long history of unintuitive and weird things turning out to be right, I don't find this line of argument compelling.

Bet51987 wrote:

CUDA wrote:

Bet51987 wrote:When he talks about "other civilizations" he means from another universe that operates under different laws. You should buy some of his books. He's awesome.

Bee

Thats not what he says per your quote of him. he talks about years advanced not an another Universe. what his comment says is based on WHAT WE CURRENTLY KNOW, that FTL travel is not possible and that in the future that could change.

Sorry, you're right. He meant our future civilizations and what we currently know. I have another book where he talks about the multiverse where other universes could operate under different laws. I had that in mind. Either way, he knows what the laws are now and he likes to speculate about the future. So do I.

Bee

He isn't so much talking about what the LAWS are now as what the technology and the understanding of the laws are right now. The laws of physics aren't going to chance a million years from now (probably*) but our understanding of them and our ability to utilize as-yet-unknown characteristics (or "loopholes") will.




* I have no basis on which to make an actual probabilistic claim here.

Sorry for the long delay in responding. Work got REAL busy.

Jeff250 wrote:The so-called paradoxes that that guy introduced are trivially fixed, even with infinite universes. (Compare the set of all integers with the set of all even integers--both are infinite.) I can just say that the ability to destroy other universes isn't a possible "physical law."

Yes, that's what I meant by putting some limits on the universes.

Jeff250 wrote:But, again, at best, all you've done here is shown that an infinite multiverse is unintuitive or "weird." But since science has a long history of unintuitive and weird things turning out to be right, I don't find this line of argument compelling.

Absolutely correct. I don't see any way to prove there isn't an infinite multi-verse. Only that it leads to conclusions that I find aesthetically unappealing. It would mean things that were astronomically improbable are almost certain to have occurred. Like a fully functioning human brain popping out of a black hole through quantum fluctuations, or an entire universe where Brownian motion has, by pure chance, managed to counteract gravity on most planets, or a universe that went in 2 seconds from chaos into an organized state exactly the same as our current universe, and, of course, the standard sf scenario of other universes identical to our own down to the atomic level.

All of these and an infinite number of other unlikely scenarios are not only almost certain to occur in an infinite multi-verse, but likely to have occurred an infinite number of times. If there is an infinite multi-verse, then there is no reason to assume that the universe and its laws can be understood, since there are an infinite number of universes where bizarrely unlikely occurrences have made the universe too random to comprehend.

That is in NO way an argument proving that an infinite multiverse doesn't exist. Just that I don't WANT it to exist.