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[LordBucket]

Was reading over some esoteric material recently, and came across an interesting idea.

For purposes of this discussion, when I say 'space' I mean, as in, cosmologically.


Imagine that, 'space' is not quite the 3d dimensional 'volume' construct that we think it to be. There is, in physics, a notion of spacetime, in which space and time are basically the same thing. So maybe there's some justification for this idea. But at this point we're not arguing for or against, we're simply exploring an idea.

Imagine that, when you look out into space and see another star or another galaxy, what you are looking at is not simply a different ball of gas or balls of gases 'over there really far away.' But rather, you're looking at an entirely different phenomenon that because of worldview and socially trained manners of thinking, you're not interpreting correctly. Imagine an ant looking at a bridge. He wouldn't understand what he's seeing. imagine a dolphin hearing the noise made by a boat rudder. He might tend to think of it as 'oh, well that's the singing of that particular species of creature.' Because 'creatures make noise to communicate' is a familiar part of his worldview. It doesn't occur to him to think that the noise is an unintended consequence of an unfamiliar means of locomotion. He lacks the context to properly interpret what his senses are telling him. Imagine that humans, similarly, lack the context to properly interpret what we see and what our instruments tell us when we gaze out into space.

Again, I'm not asserting that this is or isn't the case. This is a thought experiment.

So imagine, that those lights that you by training tend to think of as stars 'over there,' and not actually 'lights over there' and that 'space' is not composed of 'volume' or 'distance' that is crossed via physical movement.

Instead, imagine that a much smaller area, say...our solar system, is a discrete reality bubble. And imagine that other star systems are their own reality bubbles. And imagine that the spatial relationship between these bubbles is not Euclidean. Imagine that the light you see coming from other stars does exist, that it does occur, but that its arrival to your experience did not happen via a process of 'going really fast over time.' Because what we receive as 'space' is not 'volume. Rather, light from other stars is instead encroachment upon your reality by other reality bubbles.

Discuss.

[Sergarr]

I'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity

[LordBucket]

I'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity

Would you expound on your thoughts a little bit, in your own words?

[mainiac]

We assume the physical constants we observe in our own particular corner of space are universal constants.  It's not necessarily true, they could just be local constants.

[Bohandas]

Instead, imagine that a much smaller area, say...our solar system, is a discrete reality bubble. And imagine that other star systems are their own reality bubbles. And imagine that the spatial relationship between these bubbles is not Euclidean. Imagine that the light you see coming from other stars does exist, that it does occur, but that its arrival to your experience did not happen via a process of 'going really fast over time.' Because what we receive as 'space' is not 'volume. Rather, light from other stars is instead encroachment upon your reality by other reality bubbles.

Discuss.

The first two thirds of that soumd an awful lot like Spelljammer

[Shadowlord]

Discuss.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[LordBucket]

If I didn't have a final in 20 minutes I'd love to explain a brief introduction to general relativity. Unfortunately, that is currently not the case.

Still... yeah, space is weird. Minkowski space (what space actually is; not Euclidean space) is a very interesting mathematical construct.

Perhaps I phrased the title poorly. This was not intended to be a discussion of space curvature. Kind of assumed people would read the post too.

[LordBucket]

The first two thirds of that soumd an awful lot like Spelljammer

Been a long time since I've read those sourcebooks, but I mostly remember them doing arbitrary things with gravity in ways that I never understood how they were supposed to make the game better.

[Criptfeind]

Well. First thought I have is that it'd be weird, and possibly disconcerting for a while. And possibly ether a good thing or a bad thing for the long term, since it'd presumably make space travel ether way way easier or impossible/harder (which... probably would have that big of an impact on us). I don't think it'd have a huge impact on my life though ether way, but if it did mean that we could easily transverse to other solar systems I'd think that's a pretty cool thing I could see us eventually doing in significant numbers.

[Spehss _]

So how would the Voyager probes fit in with this thought experiment? Voyager 1 has gone outside the solar system and is traveling in interstellar space. It took it 35 years just to get through our solar system. By this thought experiment then it's now outside our reality bubble.

[jaked122]

I'm not sure that's what's implied here. It could be that we are in an expanding bubble of space time surrounded by thousands of other small bubbles whose interaction with our own and others leads to the generation of light and heat. Reminds me a bit of that model of reality discussed in the Culture books, but only in that there's a lot of energy being produced as a result of the interaction of space-time bubbles.


Possible but not likely, mostly because what we observe seems to more or less line up with what we could expect from similar systems to our own. That could be a result of the light from these distant bubbles being translated into something that fits inside ours, but I haven't the slightest clue as to how that could be achieved by any mechanism.

[wierd]

I really, really dont want to sound like an ass. I really really dont.

But, when I read the OP, I cant help but see it as:

Imagine if magically invisible pink unicorns were real...


Basically, things would get "real" real fast if our little solar system were somehow magically just plain different from other little solar systels, on such a fantastic level.

This doesnt even begin to answer why our measurements of distant objects all seem to match up with established theory, or "on what exactly" the light from hypothetical reality bubbles rides to get to our little bubble of reality.

Now then, I am with Ipsil that what we observe as spacetime is by no means the homogeneous smoothness that euclidian space is. The existence of matter and energy in the spacetime alter the shape of the spacetime, leading to some very curious things indeed.

But the idea of our solar system being a tiny, isolated pocket of reality, somehow being encroached upon by other star systems and their tiny pockets of reality? That... sorry, I dont think I can be civil.

[origamiscienceguy]

It's great that you have ideas, but you will need some form of evidence if you want to convince people. Otherwise Ockham's razor will kill your ideas right off the bat.

[wierd]

I could see something more like this being true:

Suppose for a moment that mostly empty space (such as intergalactic voids) behaves differently than does space that has lots of matter and energy around-- Due to the low energy conditions, local vacuum fluctuations may happen more frequently, and or, may have a more dominant effect on massless particles/waves trying to propogate through it. This disparity might explain some of the observed features of the dark matter that calculations show must make up the bulk of the universe's mass.

Then you have nonlocality, but within the confines of a single observable universe, and such a supposition should make some falsifiable predictions that can be measured.

The discrete pockets of reality idea cant do that, and relies on blind belief in invisible pink unicorns.

[IronyOwl]

Discuss.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

It's great that you have ideas, but you will need some form of evidence if you want to convince people. Otherwise Ockham's razor will kill your ideas right off the bat.

Come on, guys. He went out of his way to state like three times in the OP that "okay, I'm just saying what if, I'm not actually arguing it's true, this is a thought experiment, let's just talk about the idea." It struck me as excessive and dumb, but apparently it was still insufficient so I guess?

Discuss.

That said, discuss what? "What if you're wrong" is rather vague, as mentioned by most of the replies so far, and "it's not distance, it's something else" is reasonably close to "you're wrong" without much followup. I'm not sure I'm creative (read: determined) to do much with this topic in a vacuum like that, and I suspect I'm far from the only one.

So how would the Voyager probes fit in with this thought experiment? Voyager 1 has gone outside the solar system and is traveling in interstellar space. It took it 35 years just to get through our solar system. By this thought experiment then it's now outside our reality bubble.

Maybe that's the equivalent to trying to reach the moon by walking towards it? That level of "you're wrong" I can handle, at least.

But the idea of our solar system being a tiny, isolated pocket of reality, somehow being encroached upon by other star systems and their tiny pockets of reality? That... sorry, I dont think I can be civil.

Why not?