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[dreiche2]

Or is it expanding to fill the vacuum left by a super massive interstellar event?

Space itself is expanding into a vacuum?

  Michelson-Morley experiment (being performed utilizing light in our atmosphere to measure the existence of minuscule amounts of particle movement to determine if such particles exist in space to propagate light...)  They expected these tiny atomic particles floating around in space to effect a mass and atmosphere of Earth?  Sounds to me like they were using a speedometer on a Mack truck to determine the velocity of an mosquito hitting it's windscreen but you know, it's not currently measurable with light, so ... wait a second!

Sounds to me like you don't understand what the experiment was about...?

This is where I think Science may be going totally wrong.  They are looking for the existence of a finite point of creation.  (No wait, that was a religious "scientist" to whom Einstein disagreed with...)  And now the "Big Bang" is being used to trumpet the latest creationist movement in science. 

Creationist... hu?

What really happened initially is unknown. And like I said, there are some theories that posit cyclic universes etc., so there would be no 'beginning'. Initial big bang:

Extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past.[29] This singularity signals the breakdown of general relativity. How closely we can extrapolate towards the singularity is debated—certainly not earlier than the Planck epoch.

My personal opinion on such an event is that Einstein (and many others) may have been/are right that the universe is infinite.  The "big bang" may just be a localized expansion of material, but there's no way to measure it since we can't see past the vacuum created when this localized event occurred until the event equalizes to that vacuum.

Localized expansion of material? Again, the expansion of the universe is not about some stuff moving outwards from some central point. It's about everything moving away from everything else, as if space itself is stretching.

But, yeah... I fully understand that since we can't measure our universe and we can only really use observational science to try to figure it all out that that's all that we can see.  But placing your faith in this idea as universal truth is no better than believing in an omnipotent creator.  After all, scientists can wish they knew all the answers of creation and that somehow this universe is all that exists in this world.  They want so badly to think the answers are available today that they are willing to accept that we are special, were number one(!) and there's obviously nothing just over the horizon.  Our universe is only as big as we can see and there be monsters just over the horizon... that's the edge of the Earth universe. 

I have no idea where you have these impressions from, and again, there are several quantitative theories that reject the notion of the universe beginning with the big bang.

[Areyar]

Well. If the entire observationable section of the universe is inside a bubble of space-time that is expanding...then it might look as if everything is moving away from everything else...I think.
Then again, there could also be an unknown attenuating effect which causes wavelength-shift. IIRC I read a theory about this recently... Quantum drag?
Expansion IS still the most likely explanation for it though.

edit: Oh no! If the universe is not expanding everywhere at the same rate, we should be recieving light from 'the outside' of our observation sphere...I think.
lol. I guess it is pretty clear I'm no cosmologist.

[dreiche2]

Yeah it's important to keep in mind that these are quantitative theories, not just qualitative explanations. So one can go, well there is something like expansion and now let's brainstorm what could be the explanation, but then the next step is to actually match up the predictions of the explanations quantitatively with the measured evidence, such as the specific pattern of expansion, the background radiation etc. And the big bang theory is simply the theory that currently matches the evidence best.

[Siquo]

Only to the initiated. Andir is right when he sais that a lot of people actually believe the Big-Bang-creationist thing. And that it's just a belief, no more or less nonsensical than God-based creationism. As to "what is beyond the edge of the universe", God is as sensical an answer as "here be dragons" or "vacuum" or "more universe. Right now we're only able to see a small part of the universe, beyond that is more universe, and beyond that is the "edge", if there even is one.

On Michelson-Morley, it just proved that ether as a light-propagating agent does not exist, or if it does you might as well ignore it because light behaves as if it doesn't exist. It really has nothing to do with hypothetical Dark Energy or the expansion of the universe.


Dreiche: Using zero as a number didn't make sense to a lot of people at first, either. They reasoned in "amounts", and zero was to them not an amount. Yet those crazy arabs treated it as if it were an amount!


Areyar, the "visible universe" is just that part from which we receive light. Light is pretty slow, compared to intergalaxy-distances. If we get light from beyond our observation sphere, that observation sphere has just expanded so it's no longer from "outside". That virtual barrier is expanding at (how logical) the speed of light. Beyond that is very probably a lot more universe-as-we-know-it but that we just can't see yet, and beyond that... Dragons.

[Areyar]

yes, yes. I knew that much.
Observed sphere depends on energylevel of the light when emitted as well AFAIK.
BB was extreme and can still be detected at very low IR. (also it originated from everywhere, going anywhere...I wonder if the pattern is a result of reflection on the 'edge' and refraction.)
Light emitted at normal energies, even Nova scale, drop below detectable levels (or get absorbed by matter) long before they reach us. The range at which the highest possible emissions reach us as IR is the Observable Universe as I understand it.

[RAM]

Humans cannot think without duality

Well that may be part of what confuses me about them, so many bizarre quirks...

for every "absolute" there must be an "absolutely not".

So where does the antigod exist if somewhere and nowhere are already taken?

Slayer, Science is not an answer to the questions of the OP; "How did everything start?"
Big Bang is not a correct answer: How did the Big Bang start? Science does not say.

Religion: Where did universe come from? God! Universe exist so god must exist!

Science: Where god come from? Big bang create universe! Universe going boom, so big bang must happen!

Religion: Where big bang come from? You just be silly now.

Philosophy: Nothing come from nothing, universe just be! Everything be something, even if everything be nothing that still something. Universe what we get, if not universe than would be something else, but not something else, so universe!

[Siquo]

Philosophy actually encompasses both religion and science. Philosophy is like, omni-present, you know. 


You got me though, if everything is dual, where's the not-God? Perhaps he/she/it is just the end of the line, the start of all duality, even though... Hmmm, there might be infinite layers of them?
Yes... infinite layers. As there is God and Not-God, there is one God above him/her that encompasses both. He/she also has an anti-part, and one above him/her that encompasses both. Repeat ad nauseam, and then some. As it goes to infinity, you could see it as practical and assume just one entity instead of infinite.

Yes, I stole that example from Godel Escher Bach. Sue me.

[dreiche2]

Only to the initiated. Andir is right when he sais that a lot of people actually believe the Big-Bang-creationist thing. And that it's just a belief, no more or less nonsensical than God-based creationism. As to "what is beyond the edge of the universe", God is as sensical an answer as "here be dragons" or "vacuum" or "more universe. Right now we're only able to see a small part of the universe, beyond that is more universe, and beyond that is the "edge", if there even is one.

What exactly are you guys referring to with big-bang-creationism, please? And extrapolating from the observed expansion to an initial moment of maximal contraction is, while just a hypothesis, much more sensible than extrapolating to a supernatural being 

On Michelson-Morley, it just proved that ether as a light-propagating agent does not exist, or if it does you might as well ignore it because light behaves as if it doesn't exist. It really has nothing to do with hypothetical Dark Energy or the expansion of the universe.

Who said it would?

Dreiche: Using zero as a number didn't make sense to a lot of people at first, either. They reasoned in "amounts", and zero was to them not an amount. Yet those crazy arabs treated it as if it were an amount!

So what has that to do with you treating 'nothing' as a thing or place, or anything else we were discussing? Btw, it also contradicts your notion that humans "cannot think without duality", because the concept of zero was actually introduced relatively late. But anyway, what you are saying is totally besides the point.

You got me though, if everything is dual, where's the not-God? Perhaps he/she/it is just the end of the line, the start of all duality, even though... Hmmm, there might be infinite layers of them?

Ludwig Wittgenstein once said "philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday". Everything is dual! Omnipotence! Nothingness! All words, no reality.

[Areyar]

That zero is represented as a circle or a point is quite mystical.

[Siquo]

Who said it would?

I think Areyar brought that up.

Big-bang creationism: The belief that everything began with the Big Bang. And YES, we know that's not what Science sais, it's about what a Lot of People believe.

As to the nothing, it has to do with treating nothing as a thing/place from a meta-perspective. If all you know is the word "amount", and "amount" is always 1 or larger, and you have the word "nothing", then the concept of the word "number", which includes both "nothing" and "amount" into one collection is strange. In your words: "So now you treat zero as an amount, while an amount is by definition not zero, and zero by definition not an amount!"
The duality between "an amount of stuff" and "not having stuff at all" is the duality, and has been there for as long man can remember. The genius was the notion that there was no duality, that you can have a meta-concept called "number", that includes both zero AND all amounts.


So when I treat Nothing as a thing and a place I do so on a meta-abstraction level above the conventional "thing and place" that excludes it.

[dreiche2]

So when I treat Nothing as a thing and a place I do so on a meta-abstraction level above the conventional "thing and place" that excludes it.

uh-hu. And what was that supposed to be:

Which means that omni-presence means that you also not-exist.

[Siquo]

A level of "existence", if you can call it that, that transcends exist and not-exist.

To keep the analogy: Where we are merely amounts, God is a number, and everything above, and again, and again.

Read: God Over Djinn.

[dreiche2]

And to keep the metaphor: language on holidays.

[Siquo]

Language on holidays == I don't understand, and I'm going to stop trying.

Have you read the story I linked to? It's an excerpt from "Godel, Escher, Bach", a pretty good read.

[Areyar]

I think Areyar brought that up.

Nope. Don't know the gents in that reference. Nor did I bring up eather, I'm jsut going with the flow of discussion on that point. :p