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Re: Development Update #21

#196
Talvieno wrote:
Dinosawer wrote:In a certain quantum mechanical sense it's completely filled with "maybe electron", but that probably doesn't count. :)
It counts as much as space is filled with "maybe planet". :P
No, it's not quite that easy. :P
Planets have a definite place, however, due to the uncertainty principle, electrons don't.
The only way to describe an electron is as a probability to find out at some place in the atom.
In some way, an electron is smeared out over the entire atom.

Don't try to explain that to people, however. ;)
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Re: Development Update #21

#197
Interesting conversation. I have a question though. Do planets, or for that matter, any type of matter, have a definite place? Are they not both, in one 3D coordinate, and in all? What I mean is, we tend to look at things from our 3D world perspective, and forget that time is also a factor. We only see one slice of the whole at any given time. So in reality, all those things are in all the places it ever would be simultaneously, but we can only observe the part of them that happen to be in our "now" slice of time at the moment of observation.
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Re: Development Update #21

#199
Poet1960 wrote:Interesting conversation. I have a question though. Do planets, or for that matter, any type of matter, have a definite place? Are they not both, in one 3D coordinate, and in all? What I mean is, we tend to look at things from our 3D world perspective, and forget that time is also a factor. We only see one slice of the whole at any given time. So in reality, all those things are in all the places it ever would be simultaneously, but we can only observe the part of them that happen to be in our "now" slice of time at the moment of observation.
In a word, no. It has nothing to do with "forgetting" about time, though. There are no absolute positions in the universe. No universal standard for location. All positions and speeds are measured relative to some arbitrary reference point. Relative velocities mean that there is no absolute standard of rest, and without that you can never every say that an object isn't moving.
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Re: Development Update #21

#200
Kichae Chandramani wrote:
Poet1960 wrote:Interesting conversation. I have a question though. Do planets, or for that matter, any type of matter, have a definite place? Are they not both, in one 3D coordinate, and in all? What I mean is, we tend to look at things from our 3D world perspective, and forget that time is also a factor. We only see one slice of the whole at any given time. So in reality, all those things are in all the places it ever would be simultaneously, but we can only observe the part of them that happen to be in our "now" slice of time at the moment of observation.
In a word, no. It has nothing to do with "forgetting" about time, though. There are no absolute positions in the universe. No universal standard for location. All positions and speeds are measured relative to some arbitrary reference point. Relative velocities mean that there is no absolute standard of rest, and without that you can never every say that an object isn't moving.
That's kinda what I was thinking, but...if big bang is correct, there actually IS a reference point in regard to speed and motion, it would be the point where the bang happened. Everything would be moving away from that point so it would be the zero point.

The other thing is, I don't think time flows, I think we flow through time. If you look at 3D space, you have X, Y and Z coordinates, they don't move, we move through them, so I imagine time is the same, it exists as space does, and we move through it as we do with space, we just don't currently seem to be able to control how we move through it, although by increasing our occupation of space or displacement of it, I think we can alter HOW we move through it. That would explain why there seems to be a physical, and not just observational time effect, the faster you go.
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Re: Development Update #21

#201
The big bang didn't occur at a certain point in space, the big bang was a sudden and huge expanding of space itself. That expansion happened (and happens) in such a way that every observer perceives himself as the central point in the expansion, do there is no middle point of the universe that can be used as reference point.

Also general relativity shows that time and space are fundamentally different (albeit that they can mix up to a certain degree in extreme circumstances).
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Re: Development Update #21

#202
Dinosawer wrote:The big bang didn't occur at a certain point in space, the big bang was a sudden and huge expanding of space itself. That expansion happened (and happens) in such a way that every observer perceives himself as the central point in the expansion, do there is no middle point of the universe that can be used as reference point.

Also general relativity shows that time and space are fundamentally different (albeit that they can mix up to a certain degree in extreme circumstances).

I would say that most of that is just theory. It could go either way. It makes no sense to say that it is expanding from everywhere or appears to. If a volcano erupts, and you are a piece of magma along with other pieces of magma being tossed into the air, from your perspective the other pieces seem to be relatively stationary because they are more or less being tossed in the air at the same speed as you, but you are suspended in space and moving mostly together as a single mass although there are gaps.

Is there even a definition or theory that bothers to explain WHY there would be a physical effect like time dialation the faster you go? Has anyone tried to figure that out? I think I know why and can explain it, but I don't know if it's been done before.
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Re: Development Update #21

#203
Yeah, the big bang had no center.

Imagine our 3D universe as a big baloon.
Not the volume, the surface of it.

before the big bang there was no air in the baloon, the surface area was 0.
Everything was a the same place because there was only that single place.

Now at the big bang the baloon started to inflate, its surface expanding in all directions.

And with no center on the baloons surface.
Regardless of where on the surface you are, everything moves away from you.

Every center you could define would be arbitary and as good as any other point


Time (and space) dilatation comes from the simple principle that the speed of light is the same for everyone.
Regardless of how fast and in which direction you go light moves at C. Period.

And the speed is the same for everyone, regardless of where he is, how fast he's moving, in which direction he's moving.

Time dilation simply follows from that.
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Re: Development Update #21

#204
Cornflakes_91 wrote:Yeah, the big bang had no center.

Imagine our 3D universe as a big baloon.
Not the volume, the surface of it.

before the big bang there was no air in the baloon, the surface area was 0.
Everything was a the same place because there was only that single place.

Now at the big bang the baloon started to inflate, its surface expanding in all directions.

And with no center on the baloons surface.
Regardless of where on the surface you are, everything moves away from you.

Every center you could define would be arbitary and as good as any other point


Time (and space) dilatation comes from the simple principle that the speed of light is the same for everyone.
Regardless of how fast and in which direction you go light moves at C. Period.

And the speed is the same for everyone, regardless of where he is, how fast he's moving, in which direction he's moving.

Time dilation simply follows from that.

Okay, that makes more sense as far as it goes. The problem I have with that, is that it seems to only apply to two dimensions, x and y, and seems to ignore the z. So yeah, if you only look at it from the perspective of the surface, everything does seem to move away from you in either the x or y direction. So is space only two dimensions?
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Re: Development Update #21

#205
Poet1960 wrote:Okay, that makes more sense as far as it goes. The problem I have with that, is that it seems to only apply to two dimensions, x and y, and seems to ignore the z. So yeah, if you only look at it from the perspective of the surface, everything does seem to move away from you in either the x or y direction. So is space only two dimensions?
Ironically, your problem stems from you thinking of the universe as a 3 dimensional construct. Instead, consider the idea that the 3D universe is the surface of a 4D "hyperballoon".
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Re: Development Update #21

#206
Poet1960 wrote: Okay, that makes more sense as far as it goes. The problem I have with that, is that it seems to only apply to two dimensions, x and y, and seems to ignore the z. So yeah, if you only look at it from the perspective of the surface, everything does seem to move away from you in either the x or y direction. So is space only two dimensions?
No, space has 3 dimensions, It could be that what we observe as our universe is just part of a higher dimensional multiverse, thus our universe could relate to that like the 2D surface of the balloon relates to the 3D space in which it exists.

But because we are 3 dimensional beings, we have a hard time visualizing/grasping anything with more than 3 space dimensions, thus cornflakes used an analogy by removing a dimension to avoid that people would have to imagine 4d space.
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Re: Development Update #21

#207
Kichae Chandramani wrote:
Poet1960 wrote:Okay, that makes more sense as far as it goes. The problem I have with that, is that it seems to only apply to two dimensions, x and y, and seems to ignore the z. So yeah, if you only look at it from the perspective of the surface, everything does seem to move away from you in either the x or y direction. So is space only two dimensions?
Ironically, your problem stems from you thinking of the universe as a 3 dimensional construct. Instead, consider the idea that the 3D universe is the surface of a 4D "hyperballoon".
Right. Good point. So looking at it from at least a 4D perspective, the universe is simultaneously at it's beginning and it's end, but we only see the part of it that is in our current "now," slice of time. Gonna have to think some more about how that might manifest as looking like everything is moving away from the observer no matter where he might be.
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Re: Development Update #21

#208
No, the fourth dimension here is not time, it's a 4th spatial dimension we can't observe (and which, actually doesn't have to exist for our universe to have such a structure, but it makes thinking easier.)

Also, what I said earlier about the big bang and all that (and time dilation) is not "just a theory", it's been proven to hell and back.
Poet1960 wrote: Is there even a definition or theory that bothers to explain WHY there would be a physical effect like time dialation the faster you go? Has anyone tried to figure that out? I think I know why and can explain it, but I don't know if it's been done before.
Yeah, there was this person called Einstein who made a thing called the theory of relativity, you might have heard of it :ghost:
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Re: Development Update #21

#209
Poet1960 wrote: Right. Good point. So looking at it from at least a 4D perspective, the universe is simultaneously at it's beginning and it's end, but we only see the part of it that is in our current "now," slice of time. Gonna have to think some more about how that might manifest as looking like everything is moving away from the observer no matter where he might be.
As Dinosawer said, the fourth dimension here isn't time. Time is often considered a half-dimension when we discuss these things. I know it would make Emmett Brown cry, but Marty really needed to think 3.5 dimensionally. Even in 3.5 dimensions, the universe isn't simultaneously at its beginning and its end. That would require the beginning and ending of the universe to have the same time coordinate. That can only occur of the lifespan of the universe is identically zero.

Modern Big Bang cosmology is built on top of General Relativity, helped along with over a century of supporting evidence. As it sounds like you're trying to reinvent the wheel here, you'll have to do it with the past 150 years of data in hand, starting specifically with the study of electrodynamics, which began in earnest with the publishing of Maxwell's equations in the 1860s.

General Relativity is one of the most successful scientific models in history. The only other theories that have survived as many critical tests over the years have been Quantum Mechanics (and Quantum Field Theory), and the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. That isn't to say that there aren't aspects of GR which could use improvements (as a Popperian, I'm obliged to admit that even if we got a theory exactly right, we would never, ever be able to be 100% certain of that, and would have to strive for improvements even if improvements would never be possible) -- every scientific theory must be continually and perpetually subjected to critical tests and analysis -- but as far as our knowledge of the universe is concerned, GR is Really Damned GoodTM.

GR is built on the concept of differentiable manifolds. That's a fairly densely packed bit of jargon if you don't study multi-dimensional calculus. A manifold is a region which, when looked at closely enough, can look like a geometrically flat region (think of how the Earth's surface appears flat to us on the surface, even if the Earth itself isn't flat on a global scale). Here "flat" means that parallel lines remain parallel. Differentiable, on the other hand, means that the region has no creases and no edges (there is nowhere in the region to which you can fit more than one tangent line/surface/hyper-surface). This means that GR very strongly suggests that our universe has no edges. Without edges, you simply cannot define a centre.

Now, there are two ways you can get a universe (or anything, for that matter) without an edge. You have it curve in on itself, like a circle or sphere (or doughnut, or something like that -- just generally an enclosed, smooth shape), or you let it be infinite in extent. The first case is known, technically, as "finite and unbound", while the second is, well, infinite. In either case, the lack of edges makes it impossible to identify any specific point as a centre.

Another way to think of this is that every place is the centre. If you stand outside and look around, you will see the world extend outward in every direction, and in every direction it will end at the horizon. From your point of view, you are at the centre of the world! But if I go outside and look around, I will see the same thing. I will appear to be at the centre of the world! And so, too, will Dinosawer, or anybody else, for that matter. If we move, we will each continue to appear to be at the world's centre. Not encountering any kind of edge in our explorations, we will never come across any evidence that contradicts our claim -- except for each others' counter claims! So, if we all appear to be at the centre of the world, that strongly suggests that everywhere is the centre of the world! This is the same thing as saying that nowhere is the centre of the world (if everybody's first, than nobody is truly first).

Alright, so this is where the stage is set for a dynamic universe: It's locally "flat", it has no edges, no gaps, no sharp creases. Space is now a thing with properties of its own (like shape!), and one of those properties is that it can shrink or grow, or twist and fold (but not crease). From Special Relativity (which is a smaller part of GR), we also know that space and time are different aspects of some greater whole, and that, under certain conditions, and to a prescribed (and now well tested) degree, can exchange properties with one another. We, very creatively, call this greater whole "Space-Time".

This is all well and good in an empty universe. An empty universe turns out to be infinite in extent, flatter than paper, and completely static. Once you start adding stuff to this universe, though, it actually wants to collapse in on itself. I don't mean that the bits of stuff that you seed into the universe are attracted to one another, so they start floating toward one another, either. I mean space itself starts to collapse; the stuff gets closer together without having to actually move through space. This is kind of like letting the air out of the balloon mentioned up thread (blow up a balloon, draw some dots on it, and then let some of the air out; the distance between the dots will shrink, and it will shrink in every direction).

Now, it's also possible to make the universe expand, too. It just requires the proper kind of energy. This is what led to what is commonly called the Big Bang (in Big Bang cosmology, it's known as the "inflationary period" or "hyperinflation"; the "Big Bang" isn't usually considered to be an event in and of itself; there is merely pre-inflation, inflation, and post-inflation). It also drives the continued expansion, and the acceleration of the expansion, of the universe.

Space is growing.

Now, keep in mind that this isn't speculative. We know the universe was expanding quickly 13 billion years ago, because we can measure that. We know that the expansion slowed for about 8 billion years, because we can measure that, too. And we know that about 5 billion years ago, the expansion started to speed up again; we can also measure that.

We also know that space exhibits geometry, because we can measure it (hell, we can see it; look up "gravitational lensing", where the curving of space itself acts like an optical lens). We know that space and time can exchange properties, because we can measure that. We know that the amount of curving, and the amount of exchange, matches what's predicted by Relativity Theory, because we can compare measurements to calculations.

Keep in mind, too, that nuclear power was a prediction of Relativity Theory. E = mc2 (or, for the nit-pickers out there, E2 = (pc)2 + (mc2)2) is straight out of Einstein's papers on Relativity. This is also the basis for our understanding of how stars are powered, and as our ability to see ever deeper beneath the surfaces of stars increases, those predictions and the predictions derived from them are agreeing with our measurements.

In short, Relativity Theory is repeatedly upheld by increasingly specific and careful measurements across multiple fields, and Relativity Theory predicts that the universe has no edges and no centre. It predicts that space can, and does, grow or shrink depending on what can be found in that space. Finally, it predicts that "the Big Bang" happened everywhere, simultaneously, and that it continues to this very day (just at a slower rate; this was discovered in the 1930s by Edwin Hubble). It also strongly suggests that the universe is, in fact, infinite in extent.

The Big Bang wasn't an explosion. It was an expansion of all of space itself, everywhere, in all directions, which resulted in a universal decrease in density.
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Re: Development Update #21

#210
Kichae Chandramani wrote:Now, there are two ways you can get a universe (or anything, for that matter) without an edge. You have it curve in on itself, like a circle or sphere (or doughnut, or something like that -- just generally an enclosed, smooth shape), or you let it be infinite in extent. The first case is known, technically, as "finite and unbound", while the second is, well, infinite. In either case, the lack of edges makes it impossible to identify any specific point as a centre.
I just want to add that having a lack of edges doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a centre. Take a number line, for example - it has a centre (0), but no ends. However, you would still have no idea where on the number line you were at any point (if it were unlabelled), as it always stretches off to infinity in both directions wherever you are.

(Also, you can have edges and still be infinite, but that's irrelevant.)
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