quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
You guys are pondering the unanswerable. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you realize you can't ever know the truth of it.

I think we can know ever increasing approximations to the truth, but I don't think we will ever know everything.

Within physics, we've been pounding away at String Theory (the grand unifying theory between gravity and the other 3 fundamental forces) in it's various evolving incarnations for about 50 years now. However, complaints from within the physics community, that String Theory is providing few "testable" predictions, is beginning to relegate it as a philosophy, rather than a scientific theory.

I think that, that is telling, as to the nature of (our) existence.

We are a snail on a trillion mile journey, and we have only moved an infinitesimal bit. Yet purpose, from our perspective, to have gained great ground in our time, yet in the larger scheme, we have yet begun to move.

if you really believe the earth is flat, then this is what a lunar eclipse should look like

When I was a kid I theorized that the planets and universe's were just tiny micro cells of a larger organism. Kind of like protons and neutrons and atoms, etc.

So all the universe's could just be a cell of a humongous giant living organism, in a world similar to our own.

So, if we go deep enough into space, we find... us?

I remain amazed by the staggering and nearly incomprehensible size of just the parts we know about, of our relatively tiny neighborhood (solar system), one of countless others.

93 million miles just to our sun, for instance...

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:
I remain amazed by the staggering and nearly incomprehensible size of just the parts we know about, of our relatively tiny neighborhood (solar system), one of countless others.

93 million miles just to our sun, for instance...

Here's a mind blower for you. The fastest thing in this universe is light, which travels at 186,000 miles/second or 670,000,000 mile/hour.

If you scaled the solar system down so that the distance between the sun and earth was 1/2 mile, then the speed of light would be about 3.6 mph (walking speed).

It takes 8 minutes for light from the sun to reach Earth. The light from the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) takes about 4.5 years to reach us. That demonstrates the immense scale of even stellar distances.

quote:

Originally posted by Storm:
I think we can know ever increasing approximations to the truth, but I don't think we will ever know everything.

I believe that not only will we never get anywhere near the truth, I think that much of what's being put forth by astrophysicists these days is just plain made-up crap. "Dark matter", for instance, which is an unseen substance permeating the Universe. How do we know it's there if we can't see it? Well shit, our numbers don't add up! That's right, the Braniacs of modern science come up with wrong numbers when they calculate the total mass of the Universe, so what do they do? They fudge the numbers and make up shit.

That is how "brilliant" these guys are. Go out in your yard and scoop up a couple of handfuls of dirt and put them in a jar. There- there's our great vaunted human brain when it comes to these questions that we don't even know to ask, much last have the answers for.

Einstein made the same mistake. In order to make his numbers work, he created something known as the Cosmological Constant to explain a static Universe, which, by the way, is wrong.

Man could exist for another million generations and still be no closer to the truth of our existence than we are right now.

I would remind everyone that the vast reaches of space explored in the principal Star Trek universe was only one quarter of the Milky Way galaxy (the "Alpha Quadrant").

Pretty mind boggling.

-Rob

As I said, we chimps are puffing ourselves up at being able (we think) to slowly solve the mysteries of our existence, I'll once again say that I am of the opinion that we don't have even the slightest idea of what questions need asking, much less the answers to those questions.

Perspective. We are chimps adrift on this tiny blue rock in the midst of Infinity. Decide that you don't know because you can never know, and you will be happier. I'm not saying we should do away with our innate curiosity. I am saying prepare yourself for the reality of the situation, which is that not all questions have answers, especially the big ones, because those things are far too big to be understood by our little chimp brains.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:....Einstein made the same mistake. In order to make his numbers work, he created something known as the Cosmological Constant to explain a static Universe, which, by the way, is wrong....

Sidenote. I read an article a couple of years ago re a few deep space observation telescopes that saw the same phenomenon out there, they did calculations, compared notes, the conclusion was something like "what we observed can't happen according to our current theory, but if we assume the speed of light can exceed the speed of light, it all fits -- but we aren't ready to make that assumption".

42

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
Common knowledge then was a person would "fall off the end of the Earth" and Earth was the center of the universe.

So why do those smarter than all here still believe the universe is "forever" and not round?

And if it were round, could those stars we see be our sun?

A theory of Einstein is the universe is not "flat." (ie, "forever")

And Einstein's theory's have yet to be proven wrong.

There is only one way to prove this wrong.

You're going to have to post citations to how your assumption is correct that "those smarter than all here" actually do "still believe" that "the universe is 'forever' and not round."

I doubt that the intelligent people who think about such things believe that the universe is "forever." The latest theory for the universe is that it was created in a big bang and has been continually expanding ever since. The most commonly known evidence of this is the background radiation and, that everywhere you look, it seems that galaxies are accelerating farther from us (not just speeding away). This second part is known as Hubble's law. Note that it's been deemed a law and not just a theory.

"Round" is the best assumption we have for the universe as that is the shape of any explosion. People who think about these things currently assume that the universe is like a skin of a balloon that is being inflated.

The big bang theory is not without its shortcomings as a theory as it fails to account for the non-uniform distribution of matter throughout space.

Here's the shape of the Universe:



That's as valid a guess as all the rest ever made, by anyone.

We

Cannot

Know

EVER,

Chimps

The earth is flat and spinning very quickly (like a coin spinning on a table) so it appears to be a sphere. We live on the edge, not the flat part. This also explaims why eclipses look the way they do and not like in the picture.

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
if you really believe the earth is flat, then this is what a lunar eclipse should look like

After reading all of these posts why do I feel like I am in a Rod Serling movie?

Believing that the universe goes on forever and ever is...

Wait for it...

Racist!

Why are you interjecting politics into this thread?

Are you new here?

Just trying to illicit a chuckle. I apologize.