Does the Universe have a limit?

Yes.

Infinite objects cannot exist.

 

You just went over my head.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

 

There are infinite points in a space. Therefore, doesn't this suggest that the universe must be infinite because it contains that infinity of points?

 

One theory I read about actually proposes that space/spacetime is not infinitely divisible, and instead suggests that spacetime is actually discretized, such that there exists a smallest unit of spacetime that cannot be divided any further.

http://www.phys.lsu.edu/faculty/pullin/sciam.pdf

Waaay over my head, but still fun to read. Weird wild and wacky shtuff!

 

How is a list of facts that we have learned proof that we know nothing?

Not that I disagree with the conclusion.

 

What is the possibility of us being an organism within another organism?

Or maybe God sets these limits on us, because WE CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

 

Oh, come on...you know what I'm saying.

Because we know how expansive the universe is, it tells me in turn that we know nothing. Basically I feel that if our knowledge about the universe were measured numerically, it would look something like this: 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%.

Just the idea that something the size of a pinhead could weigh millions of tons, or that it could take 6 billion years to travel somewhere...those things indicate to me to that the universe around us is so unimaginably different from here, and so much larger than anything the human mind can even begin to fathom, that what we do know is so close to nothing that we might as well consider it that.

I mean, in terms of actually setting foot on a celestial body, we've only made it as far as a mere 240,000 miles from Earth. That's it.

I just can't get over the amount of "unknown" there is when you consider that just our own galaxy is 5,878,570,000,000,000,000 miles wide (110,000 light years) and the universe itself has been estimated at about 1.5 million times bigger than that (156,000,000,000 light years)...

Then there's the whole parallel universes thing...so again, I feel that we really know nothing.

 

These numbers are so big that they hold no meaning to most of us. I mean who really knows how large millions of trillions is?

 

No matter how much info mankind thinks it knows, it is only a very small fraction of the amount of knowledge out there.

It's part of the arrogance of being human. We've really only been smart for a few thousand years, but somehow scientists and mathmeticians think there can only absolute answers for everything. How naive.

So to say that there is an end to our universe, or to find a human that thinks he/she knows the answer to the question is almost comical. Granted, that guy/girl knows a ton more than I do, but in the grand scheme, even he doesn't know jack.

 

Some day we might, and that is what these genius people are striving for. It will have to be a collective effort, so start thinking more

 

If we ever get to the point where we can expand and populate other planets, why not?


I do not think that the idea of eventually being able to essentially build up and populate planets is out the question, And if that happens, who is to say we cannot expand for millions of years............

Who knows? We may have something/someone out there to help us out with that......

 

I find it funny that you state as fact that we know only a tiny percentage of all possible knowledge and that there are no absolute answers while at the same time calling others naive for thinking they understand how the universe works.

 

when scientists say the universe is expanding, what exactly are they trying to say ? what is universe anyways? if the universe is expanding, doesnt it mean it is expanding to something? (like if a balloon is expanding, its occupying more space) but to my understanding the universe includes everything that physically exist, so how can the universe (which includes everything) be expanding to something else? if the universe is infinite, how can it be expanding?

by the way can someone explain to me the Mandelbrot set in simple english? its very interesting to me but i can hardly understand anything they wrote in wikipedia...

 

The thing wrong about the bolded statement is that the Universe cannot occupy space. Because space IS the Universe. It's hard to say what is beyond the boundaries of the Universe, if there are any boundaries.

Oh and "The Universe" is one the history channel not NGC.<---to kingk0ng

 

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I'm no scientist, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

I'm not sure about the universe expanding thing, although I do think I read once that space itself is supposedly expanding, causing the wavelength of light traveling great distances to be increased.

As for the Mandelbrot set, it's a bit simpler (sort of):

First, you need to know what complex numbers are. These are numbers that are notated as:

a + bi

where a and b are real numbers and i is the square root of negative one (an "imaginary number"). So, for instance, 3 + 5i would be an imaginary number equal to 3 plus 5 times the square root of -1. A graph of complex numbers looks like this:



The graph shows (-20 + 10i) and (30 + 40i).

Now, to make the Mandelbrot set, you pick a lot of these points on the graph of complex numbers and use a sort of formula to decide what color they will be on the graph. Each of these points will be called "c". You pick a value for c and find the next point, (let's call it c[2] here).

c[2] = c^2 + c ("c squared plus c")

The next point will be equal to:

c[3] = c[2]^2 + c ("c[2] squared plus c")

Then,

c[4] = c[3]^2 + c

and you repeat, or "iterate", this over and over with each new point on the graph. What you are looking to see is whether the resulting numbers eventually "escape" to infinity after enough iterations. Typically, you color those points that do not escape to infinity black. After you've done this for thousands of points, you get a picture that looks like this:



For a more interesting picture, you can make the white part different colors based on how many iterations it takes before the resulting numbers get larger than a certain amount. Then, you get a picture like this:



The image has a lot of really bizarre and fascinating properties, but some of those can probably be more easily understood without too much of a math background.

The real fun part is playing with the set yourself and zooming in on different parts or whatever. I like this site:

http://www.h-schmidt.net/MandelApplet/mandelapplet.html