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Unapologetic Old
School Curmudgeon
Picture of Lord Vaalic
posted Hide Post
What s the difference between mostly sunny and partly cloudy?




Don't weep for the stupid, or you will be crying all day
 
Posts: 10719 | Location: TN | Registered: December 18, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
semi-reformed sailor
Picture of MikeinNC
posted Hide Post
42


Ok, seriously, I wonder if when we die and go to heaven do we get to know how things were in history and can we see those kinda things? Like you could go back to Ancient Greece and watch the city states fight each other, or could you go see DaVinci draw his vitruvian man...



"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.” Robert A. Heinlein

“You may beat me, but you will never win.” sigmonkey-2020

“A single round of buckshot to the torso almost always results in an immediate change of behavior.” Chris Baker
 
Posts: 11246 | Location: Temple, Texas! | Registered: October 07, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Unapologetic Old
School Curmudgeon
Picture of Lord Vaalic
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by maladat:
quote:
Originally posted by mcrimm:
quote:
Originally posted by Gustofer:
If M&Ms melt in your mouth and not in your hands, what do they do in your armpits?

quote:
Originally posted by nhracecraft:
If the Universe is expanding, then what's outside the Universe?


In all seriousness, I have asked myself this question more times than you can count. Sitting aside a campfire looking up at the Milky Way and thinking to myself, what's outside of this...and what's outside of that...and what's outside of that? Etc....

Sometimes, I guess, there are no answers.


Stephen Hawking remarked in his book, A Brief History in Time, “In this way, Edwin Hubble worked out the distances to nine different galaxies. We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars.”

So, what’s beyond all of this?


According to our current understanding of physics, the answer to this question is "nothing."

Not "nothing" in the sense of empty space without anything in it - "nothing" in the sense that there's no "outside the universe" for anything to be in in the first place.

For this to make any sense at all, you have to understand that when physicists talk about the universe "expanding," they don't really mean space is sitting still and all the stars and stuff are shooting across it getting farther apart, they mean space itself is getting bigger.

If you picture a piece of the universe as a bunch of dots (stars) on a piece of graph paper (space), the universe expanding means that the piece of paper is getting stretched out, and the squares on the graph paper are getting bigger, not that the dots are moving across the paper (although of course, that happens too).

The other part necessary for it to make any sense at all is that, according to our current understanding, the universe doesn't have an "edge" or an "end." There are basically two possibilities, either the universe is infinite (it goes on forever, so there's no end) or it's finite, but kind of loops back on itself (so if you travel far enough in one direction, you end up back where you started).

The universe looping back on itself is impossible to visualise in 3D space, but you can do it easily by taking away a dimension. Make "the universe" be the surface of a ball. The surface doesn't have an end, and if you travel straight across the surface for one entire circumference, you end up back where you started.


But when you leave the surface of the ball, by going straight up for example, you are entering something else. So you can't just take away a dimension, that dimension is there and exists.

Kind of like how imaginary numbers can't exist based on the rules of math, but if they don't exist whole disciplines of math dont work.

Maybe, we just don't really understand a damn thing after all.




Don't weep for the stupid, or you will be crying all day
 
Posts: 10719 | Location: TN | Registered: December 18, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?


No one's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.- Mark Twain
 
Posts: 3505 | Location: TX | Registered: October 08, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Ken226
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
quote:
Originally posted by maladat:
quote:
Originally posted by mcrimm:
quote:
Originally posted by Gustofer:
If M&Ms melt in your mouth and not in your hands, what do they do in your armpits?

quote:
Originally posted by nhracecraft:
If the Universe is expanding, then what's outside the Universe?


In all seriousness, I have asked myself this question more times than you can count. Sitting aside a campfire looking up at the Milky Way and thinking to myself, what's outside of this...and what's outside of that...and what's outside of that? Etc....

Sometimes, I guess, there are no answers.


Stephen Hawking remarked in his book, A Brief History in Time, “In this way, Edwin Hubble worked out the distances to nine different galaxies. We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars.”

So, what’s beyond all of this?


According to our current understanding of physics, the answer to this question is "nothing."

Not "nothing" in the sense of empty space without anything in it - "nothing" in the sense that there's no "outside the universe" for anything to be in in the first place.

For this to make any sense at all, you have to understand that when physicists talk about the universe "expanding," they don't really mean space is sitting still and all the stars and stuff are shooting across it getting farther apart, they mean space itself is getting bigger.

If you picture a piece of the universe as a bunch of dots (stars) on a piece of graph paper (space), the universe expanding means that the piece of paper is getting stretched out, and the squares on the graph paper are getting bigger, not that the dots are moving across the paper (although of course, that happens too).

The other part necessary for it to make any sense at all is that, according to our current understanding, the universe doesn't have an "edge" or an "end." There are basically two possibilities, either the universe is infinite (it goes on forever, so there's no end) or it's finite, but kind of loops back on itself (so if you travel far enough in one direction, you end up back where you started).

The universe looping back on itself is impossible to visualise in 3D space, but you can do it easily by taking away a dimension. Make "the universe" be the surface of a ball. The surface doesn't have an end, and if you travel straight across the surface for one entire circumference, you end up back where you started.


But when you leave the surface of the ball, by going straight up for example, you are entering something else. So you can't just take away a dimension, that dimension is there and exists.

Kind of like how imaginary numbers can't exist based on the rules of math, but if they don't exist whole disciplines of math dont work.

Maybe, we just don't really understand a damn thing after all.


It's commonly believed amongst physics nerds that the 4 commonly known diminsions, are not the only ones that exist. They just happen to be the only ones our senses can detect and brains can understand.

Like, Pac-Man can't see up or down. The ability wasn't useful, so evolution ignored it. Picture a 3 dimensional torus, turned vertical, superimposed through pac-man's 2 dimensional universe. He would see 2 seperate points in space, and could mathematically measure heat transfer, electrical current, vibration, etc being transmitted magically from one point to the other.

I always wondered about how gravity, magnetic forces and electromagnetic radiation would look if we could access other dimensions of our universe.

Perhaps if, in addition to X, Y, Z and T, we could see into dimension B, things like magnetism and gravity would be easier to understand.
 
Posts: 1563 | Location: WA | Registered: December 23, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Staring back
from the abyss
Picture of Gustofer
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by maladat:
The other part necessary for it to make any sense at all is that, according to our current understanding, the universe doesn't have an "edge" or an "end." There are basically two possibilities, either the universe is infinite (it goes on forever, so there's no end) or it's finite,...

Our universe itself could be finite. But our universe has to be in something. Something has to contain it. But what is that? And what contains whatever contains our universe?

It hurts my brain.


________________________________________________________
"Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil." Doug Patton.
 
Posts: 19975 | Location: Montana | Registered: November 01, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of maladat
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
But when you leave the surface of the ball, by going straight up for example, you are entering something else. So you can't just take away a dimension, that dimension is there and exists.


Sure, because we're looking at a 2D surface in a 3D space, to make it easy to visualize. This is helpful because the surface-of-the-ball 2D surface is a curved space, and at the level that we interact with space on a day-to-day basis, space is flat. We have no experience with curved space, so we have trouble visualizing or even imagining it.

It's just an analogy.

You can have the surface-of-the-ball 2D surface be a 2D space, with no other dimension to go "somewhere else," too. You just can't visualize it.
 
Posts: 6319 | Location: CA | Registered: January 24, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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posted Hide Post
The latest theory ,do we exist in a simulated setting created in posterity by man. This theory is being touted by several respected theoretical physicists.
 
Posts: 2714 | Registered: March 22, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of maladat
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Gustofer:
quote:
Originally posted by maladat:
The other part necessary for it to make any sense at all is that, according to our current understanding, the universe doesn't have an "edge" or an "end." There are basically two possibilities, either the universe is infinite (it goes on forever, so there's no end) or it's finite,...

Our universe itself could be finite. But our universe has to be in something. Something has to contain it. But what is that? And what contains whatever contains our universe?

It hurts my brain.


Actually, the generally accepted theory is that the universe is all there is, and that in fact there CAN'T be anything outside it to contain it.
 
Posts: 6319 | Location: CA | Registered: January 24, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Dinosaur
Picture of P210
posted Hide Post
Why don’t hot dog and roll packages contain the same number of contents?
 
Posts: 6955 | Location: 96753 | Registered: December 15, 1999Reply With QuoteReport This Post
אַרְיֵה
Picture of V-Tail
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:

What s the difference between mostly sunny and partly cloudy?
It can be partly cloudy either day or night.



הרחפת שלי מלאה בצלופחים
 
Posts: 30544 | Location: Central Florida, Orlando area | Registered: January 03, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Crusty old
curmudgeon
Picture of Jimbo54
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Gustofer:
quote:
Originally posted by maladat:
The other part necessary for it to make any sense at all is that, according to our current understanding, the universe doesn't have an "edge" or an "end." There are basically two possibilities, either the universe is infinite (it goes on forever, so there's no end) or it's finite,...

Our universe itself could be finite. But our universe has to be in something. Something has to contain it. But what is that? And what contains whatever contains our universe?

It hurts my brain.


Go back to page 3 and look at the picture I posted. Taken by Hubble in a region thought to be empty of any celestial objects. They were wrong. They found thousands of galaxies where there was supposed to be nothing. There's your answer. The universe never ends. Big Grin

Jim


________________________

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll have to be a horrible warning" -Catherine Aird
 
Posts: 9791 | Location: The right side of Washington State | Registered: September 14, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Lost
Picture of kkina
posted Hide Post
The most basic Zen koan is mu, "nothingness". If I ask you to think of nothingness, most people picture blackness in their minds. But that's wrong, as blackness is something.

Whatever that not-blackness is, the Universe is sitting in it.



ACCU-STRUT FOR MINI-14
"First, Eyes."
 
Posts: 16266 | Location: SF Bay Area | Registered: December 11, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Staring back
from the abyss
Picture of Gustofer
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by maladat:
Actually, the generally accepted theory is that the universe is all there is, and that in fact there CAN'T be anything outside it to contain it.

That don't make no sense!

quote:
Originally posted by Jimbo54: The universe never ends. Big Grin

I've got a headache. Big Grin


________________________________________________________
"Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil." Doug Patton.
 
Posts: 19975 | Location: Montana | Registered: November 01, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
On the wrong side of
the Mobius strip
Picture of Patrick-SP2022
posted Hide Post
Donovan Leitch has the answer.

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.




 
Posts: 4123 | Location: Texas | Registered: April 16, 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Cruising the
Highway to Hell
Picture of 95flhr
posted Hide Post
If there is only one god, why so many religions?




“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”
― Ronald Reagan

Retired old fart
 
Posts: 6474 | Location: Near the Beaverdam in VA | Registered: February 13, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
Similar to unishot, but different -

Sometimes it is not as important to have the right answer...

as it is to have the right question
 
Posts: 2130 | Location: south central Pennsylvania | Registered: November 05, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Unhyphenated American
Picture of Floyd D. Barber
posted Hide Post
Why do we drive on the parkway and park in the driveway?


__________________________________________________________________________________
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.
Richard M Nixon

It's nice to be important, it's more important to be nice.
Billy Joe Shaver

NRA Life Member

 
Posts: 7353 | Location: Between the Moon and New York City. | Registered: November 27, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Master of one hand
pistol shooting
Picture of Hamden106
posted Hide Post
In creation theory, who created the creators?

In big bang theory, what was before the boom?



SIGnature
NRA Benefactor CMP Pistol Distinguished
 
Posts: 6295 | Location: Oregon | Registered: September 01, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of HayesGreener
posted Hide Post
If I can always hit the low 6 option in skeet, why couldn't I hit it the first time? I must ask the Dahli Llama


CMSGT USAF (Retired)
Chief of Police (Retired)
 
Posts: 4358 | Location: Florida Panhandle | Registered: September 27, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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