If the universe is expanding

[Eric Hahl]

Originally Posted by Tervuren

Eric, do you really believe that humans are evolving?
What I see is knowledge is being passed down and not having to be gained anew.
Our knowledge is evolving.
But humans?
What is our DNA doing?

I sure do. I believe nothing stays the same. There is constant change in everything, good or bad.

What is our DNA doing? Well, cancer research tells us its mutating, changing. At least some of it. Of course we look at this as a bad thing, it kills us after all. I just wonder if its mutations like this that are testing the waters of change so to speak. Is that part of evolution? Yeah, weird thought I guess.

[Crowbob]

Originally Posted by hcoles

This sounds good - I was following until "nothing is moving yet the universe is expanding".
The TV show I mentioned above was exploring this subject as it relates to finding other life or other life finding us.

Because time slows as speed increases, the faster an object travels, the longer it takes to go from point a to point b. Taking it to the extreme, which is the speed at which the universe is expanding, time is nearly static, at the extreme time stops. Per some, there is nothing to warp space-time.

It is not possible, mathematically, for there not to be life on some other planet. If there are infinite or nearly infinite stars, galaxies, etc. the probability that there is one planet and one planet only that has life, approaches zero.

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

...

It is not possible, mathematically, for there not to be life on some other planet. If there are infinite or nearly infinite stars, galaxies, etc. the probability that there is one planet and one planet only that has life, approaches zero.

Yea but were are they? And why haven't we found any sign of them?

[hcoles]

from a practical standpoint.... say we find a planet with life that can listen to signals we might send.
We send the first signal and they get it X thousands of years later. They send a signal back that we get 2X thousands of years later that we can't understand. Or let's say we do understand. The response is "Hi Earth, glad to meet you. What can we do for you?" We send a message back listing what they might do for us.... this continues and maybe 10 thousand years pass before we get anything useful. Not going to happen, a huge waste of money.

[Eric Hahl]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Because time slows as speed increases, the faster an object travels, the longer it takes to go from point a to point b. Taking it to the extreme, which is the speed at which the universe is expanding, time is nearly static, at the extreme time stops. Per some, there is nothing to warp space-time.

It is not possible, mathematically, for there not to be life on some other planet. If there are infinite or nearly infinite stars, galaxies, etc. the probability that there is one planet and one planet only that has life, approaches zero.

Time only slows for the traveler, not the observer.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a great explanation of time and speed. Goes something like this.
Imagine you are a photon of light being emitted from the Sun. You reach the Sun surface and start your journey towards Earth. you are traveling at the speed of light. For the outside observer it takes 8 minutes for you to reach Earth. However, you reached the speed of light so time stopped for you. You were born and instantly died in the same moment you hit some bare ass on a beach someplace on Earth.

[Crowbob]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

Yea but were are they? And why haven't we found any sign of them?

We have. To some other inhabited planet that surely is out there, we are the aliens. But the search (ours or theirs) for intelligent life may take a while longer.

[Tervuren]

I suppose I was misunderstood.
I wasn't saying humanity stays the same.
Rather that it seems humanity is devolving while our tech and increased numbers are masking it.
The ideas that Glenn posted are rather outdated and might have been more believeable when those ideas went mainstream in academia in the late 1800's.
The discoveries since keep yielding "complications" to that idea.

There is a certain self rightesness smugness in assuming evolution.
The smugness from the implication that I would then be superior to those who came before.
It makes me laugh, and I have to stop and question if we really are.
I'm not tabs level perfection; so as younger than tabs that weights me to devolution.

Originally Posted by Eric Hahl

I sure do. I believe nothing stays the same. There is constant change in everything, good or bad.

What is our DNA doing? Well, cancer research tells us its mutating, changing. At least some of it. Of course we look at this as a bad thing, it kills us after all. I just wonder if its mutations like this that are testing the waters of change so to speak. Is that part of evolution? Yeah, weird thought I guess.

[Eric Hahl]

Originally Posted by Tervuren

I suppose I was misunderstood.
I wasn't saying humanity stays the same.
Rather that it seems humanity is devolving while our tech and increased numbers are masking it.
The ideas that Glenn posted are rather outdated and might have been more believeable when those ideas went mainstream in academia in the late 1800's.
The discoveries since keep yielding "complications" to that idea.

There is a certain self rightesness smugness in assuming evolution.
The smugness from the implication that I would then be superior to those who came before.
It makes me laugh, and I have to stop and question if we really are.
I'm not tabs level perfection; so as younger than tabs that weights me to devolution.

Maybe evolution is the wrong term...maybe just simply change because I am right there with ya on the devolving comment, lol.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Two objects traveling away from each other each at the speed of light means they are traveling at twice the speed of light. In other words, object A is moving away from object B at twice the speed of light and vice versa.

That’s the relativity part. The objects are moving relative to each other at twice the speed of light. But relative to their starting point, each are moving away from it at the speed of light.

However, if you have infinite starting points with infinite objects moving away from them, nothing is moving at greater than the speed of light. Yet, even though one edge of the universe is receding from the opposite edge at infinite multiples of the speed of light, because time relative to the object slows as that object approaches the speed of light, as the universe expands it takes proportionally longer to travel greater distance so that at some point in space-time, nothing is moving yet the universe is expanding.

That is not correct. You're using two completely different things that *seem* similar, but are in fact describing two completely different scenarios.

Special relativity concerns motion COMPARED TO A REFERENCE FRAME. When you move quickly compared to a reference frame, you will see time dilation and length contraction and such.

Expansion of the Universe is expansion OF THE REFERENCE FRAME ITSELF. Completely different science. Two objects will appear to move away from each other based on the redshift, but they are not each moving in respect to the reference frame. Apparent super-luminar speed (greater than the speed of light) between distant objects from the expansion of the Universe doesn't mean that they are actually moving that fast WITH RESPECT TO A REFERENCE FRAME, they can in fact be standing still, yet the red shift shows a motion of separation.

[Crowbob]

What Mike said, I think.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by Bill Verburg

here's an even broader and more detailed look, be sure to watch the animation at the bottom, The scope is breathtaking

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-new-3d-map-of-the-universe-covers-more-than-100-million-light-years-753656/

It was, thanks Bill.

This also blew my mind at the opposite end of scope. Love Dr. Don Lincoln, a true rock star.

[Geneman]

If evidence of previous biotic life is found on mars, ( barring hitching a ride on one of our landers) its extremely likely it originated on earth first and was transported there due to due to earths bombardment with meteors etc. see the panspermia hypothesis. the epochs on earth wherein biotic life teemed on earth overlapped significantly with impacts which could project material that far,. plus its been proven spores can survive in space. jmho

[flatbutt]

Originally Posted by Geneman

Interesting contribution on this just published: 94% of all galaxies in the visible universe unreachable. .. unless one can travel faster than light... very well written article with great diagrams...

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/universes-galaxies-unreachable/

The concept of expanding space always intrigues me. It's not the same as the distance between galaxies increasing but the expansion of the space which contains all of it.

My apes brain asks "wait how can space itself expand? Expand into what?"

If space is expanding doesn't it need additional room to expand into? What lies beyond the ultimate edge of space that contains the area needed for expansion? Oh it just blows my mind.

[1990C4S]

My main takeaway here is that FB has an 'ape brain'. So, basically, nothing new to see.

[Crowbob]

There is no ‘edge’ of the universe. Though simplistic, think of the center of the universe as being a light bulb. The light emitted by that bulb is the universe itself. The light particles being objects such as, say, galaxy clusters. The closer to the bulb, the more intense is the light; the closer the galaxy clusters are to one another and can be seen by each other. Similarly, the farther away from the bulb, the less intense the light. Eventually, at some point, the light being emitted is so weak, the light particles being so far away from the center and from each other that there is no longer any energy, force or influence of any kind of any particle over any other particle. There is no information passed from one particle to another particle. There is nothing.

However, those particles are still moving away from the center-expanding the universe.

[Tervuren]

An important distinction to understand about "science", is there is that which can be tested and repeated which and that this is separate from that which we lack the capability to conduct the same.

That which falls into the latter, although interesting, and I'm glad people pursue it, is subject to chang.
To devote oneself to memorization of that which is cannot be calibrated should be done with the mindset that what one is learning may yet prove false.

[Crowbob]

Who’s Chang?

[Tervuren]

Emperor Wuzhao
Had he but been given coffee at birth but without the cough his birth name would have been Change.

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Who’s Chang?

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by Tervuren

An important distinction to understand about "science", is there is that which can be tested and repeated which and that this is separate from that which we lack the capability to conduct the same.

That which falls into the latter, although interesting, and I'm glad people pursue it, is subject to chang.
To devote oneself to memorization of that which is cannot be calibrated should be done with the mindset that what one is learning may yet prove false.

That is most of what physics is, lots of math and thinking brought Einstein to come up with what is no doubt the most famous equation of all, E = mc2. There was no way to test his theory of relativity at all, at first. Over the years it has indeed been tested and proved to be precise.

It all came from just a smart man thinking and scribbling notes on paper, but without his theory, the GPS system would be totally impossible. With just Newtonian math, the GPS system will not work. Einstein certainly had no idea how his theory would ever be of real practical application, but all of the GPS systems used by all the different countries of the world rely on his theory every day.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

The concept of expanding space always intrigues me. It's not the same as the distance between galaxies increasing but the expansion of the space which contains all of it.

My apes brain asks "wait how can space itself expand? Expand into what?"

If space is expanding doesn't it need additional room to expand into? What lies beyond the ultimate edge of space that contains the area needed for expansion? Oh it just blows my mind.

Our 3 dimensional space is expanding into the 4th dimension.

Take the balloon that keeps getting mentioned. Draw the dots that keep getting mentioned. Those dots are 2-dimentional creatures, they can go left and right and forwards and backwards on the surface of the balloon, but that's it. They also cannot see that the balloon wraps around on itself in 3 dimensions.
Blow up the balloon. The balloon expands in the 3rd dimension (up/down), while those 2-D dot-creatures all move apart from each other in their 2-D world. But, the dot-creatures say "where are we expanding INTO? It makes no sense!". That's because they're expanding into the 3rd dimension, which means nothing to their 2-dimension minds.


We are a 3 dimension Universe expanding into the 4th dimension, which means nothing to our 3-D brains.