Concept of Infinity

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
21

[quote]ephrem wrote:
If nothingness is the absence of everything, we have no way of knowing what it is.

The concept of nothingness is therefore meaningless.

Infinity, well, just imagine that any point in the universe is the centre, and that’s it.

![/quote]

Ugh, ephrem! You know better than that! They have the good shit at the coffee shop?

Infinity isn’t a concept it is a reality. There are an infinite amount of numbers, infinite possibilities, infinite variations, etc. The universe, has a size, shape and origin. There is a before and there may very well be an after.
Real big doesn’t mean infinite.

Nothingness, ironically does mean something. It is the absence of existence. That is not meaningless, that is a critically important definition.

22

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Essentially, time is a natural law of the universe. You cannot apply it to things outside the universe. You cannot define the existence of the universe using internal components. If you tried to, you’d have nothing more than a circular definition.[/quote]

“You cannot apply it to things outside the universe. You cannot define the existence of the universe using internal components.”

Now that is an interesting statment…

23

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Essentially, time is a natural law of the universe. You cannot apply it to things outside the universe. You cannot define the existence of the universe using internal components. If you tried to, you’d have nothing more than a circular definition.[/quote]

“You cannot apply it to things outside the universe. You cannot define the existence of the universe using internal components.”

Now that is an interesting statment…[/quote]

I kind of skipped this one… but, yes. That is an interesting statement. It’s absolutely cynical from an absolutist’s perspective, and it’s flippantly dismissive of hundreds of years of work in cosmology, astrophysics, etc…

24

[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
Hmmm…

Some interesting ideas here, though most are a little off the mark. A few points:

  1. Time is not necessarily an “imaginary concept.” There are plenty of physicists who would argue that time and more importantly time symmetry is inexorably interwoven with electromagnetism. Their argument tends to reduce to the relationship between the electric dipoles of neutrons and their intrinsic direction of spin.
    [/quote]
    I would agree time is not imaginary nor a concept. Of course those physicists went to great empirical lengths to show what the philosophers of yore already knew, time is a measurement of movement; even at the diphole level…(Sounds like a good insult, I am gonna call some one that).

Something about string theory and it’s variants bugs me, but I cannot put my finger on it. It seems to complicated an explanation to explain the very simple.
I think this is going to be future of quantum mechanics…E8

http://www.ted.com/talks/garrett_lisi_on_his_theory_of_everything.html

Great Post!

25

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
If nothingness is the absence of everything, we have no way of knowing what it is.

The concept of nothingness is therefore meaningless.

Infinity, well, just imagine that any point in the universe is the centre, and that’s it.

![/quote]

Ugh, ephrem! You know better than that! They have the good shit at the coffee shop?

Infinity isn’t a concept it is a reality. There are an infinite amount of numbers, infinite possibilities, infinite variations, etc. The universe, has a size, shape and origin. There is a before and there may very well be an after.
Real big doesn’t mean infinite.

Nothingness, ironically does mean something. It is the absence of existence. That is not meaningless, that is a critically important definition. [/quote]

This is the kind of issue I wanted to sink my teeth into. I like this post.

26

[quote]Magicpunch wrote:
Questions such as “can something come from nothing?” bother me - as I’m not up to date with scientific enquiry on this matter, I’m going to assume - for argument’s sake - that something cannot come from nothing.

And if the universe exists, then it came from something. But does my previous sentence imply that ‘something’ has always existed?

At this point, my head will generally spin out and I’ll attack the nearest person to me. Because the “something has always existed” takes me into the realm of infinity and beyond … (is it called infinite regression?)

I hope that ‘About Time’ book you mentioned deals with this scenario, as I’m about to order it![/quote]

No, something from nothing cannot happen. It is a mathematical, philosophical, scientific impossibility. Proponents will argue “Null Theory” but if examined not even that closely, you will see there is “something” not nothing there. Hawking will argue that he can imagine a universe being created “…without the need for God.” His reasoning? Gravity. Last time I looked in my untrained mind, gravity is a “something” not nothing. Further, current theory on what gives shit gravity are a combination of bosons and higgs particles, know as the boson-higgs particle, or …wait for it…“The God particle”.

Two things that are absent in the universe, nothingness and randomness. It does not exist at any level, realm, or parallel universe. Even the most far reaching and flakiest threories cannot remotely prove either exist or ever have.

27

[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
Hmmm…

Some interesting ideas here, though most are a little off the mark. A few points:

  1. Time is not necessarily an “imaginary concept.” There are plenty of physicists who would argue that time and more importantly time symmetry is inexorably interwoven with electromagnetism. Their argument tends to reduce to the relationship between the electric dipoles of neutrons and their intrinsic direction of spin.

  2. In terms of defining the “universe;” It is also plausible that there are things outside of our universe. There are certainly things that are beyond what is our “observable universe,” things past our event horizon. As above, there is plenty of good science supporting multiverse theories.

  3. Time is also not guaranteed to be consistent in pace or even direction in all parts of our universe. Hawkins made a very good case for time literally flowing backwards in a black hole.

  4. Much of what troubles you with the concept of infinity could simply be the result of not having the proper context within which to consider it. Time and its behavior becomes a mathematical exercise at some point, and this may be the only way that we can interact with it that transcends our hard-wired perceptions of causality, etc… evolutionary tools suitable to our environment.

I’m near the end of a really fantastic book on just this topic; About TIme by Paul Davies. I can’t recommend it highly enough… in fact, pretty much everything I’ve read by him has been great. Though, Cosmic Jackpot stands out. I would almost say read that one first, then About Time.

[/quote]

It is imaginary in the sense it is not self defined.

I’m also not sure what you mean by our event horizon, last I’d heard we weren’t in one. Do you mean a light cone or something?

I think you are missing my point. Time is really just a label to describe the way we experience the universe. And yes, your point that time flow is perspective based actually furthers my point. Time even within the universe isn’t an absolute.

But my point is that the universe and existence define the concept of time, you cannot therefore apply that concept of time to help define the existence of the universe.

Time is nothing more than a dimension, but people always get hung up on it as if it is something more. It is nothing more than a length. Without the universe, which is necessary when discussing origin, time does not exist. You wouldn’t try to understand god (and other metaphysical concepts) by discussing how long, wide, or tall he (it) is. By the same token it doesn’t make sense to discus how old he is or when, in “universe time”, things started. Time is defined by the universe, things outside of the physical universe are timeless in the same way they are dimensionless. Origin of matter/energy is not and cannot be a scientific concept (in large part because it violates one or two of science’s basic axioms). You cannot apply scientific worldly principals to it. Origin isn’t a infinite in time concept, it is a timeless one, there is a difference.

28

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
If nothingness is the absence of everything, we have no way of knowing what it is.

The concept of nothingness is therefore meaningless.

Infinity, well, just imagine that any point in the universe is the centre, and that’s it.

![/quote]

Ugh, ephrem! You know better than that! They have the good shit at the coffee shop?

Infinity isn’t a concept it is a reality. There are an infinite amount of numbers, infinite possibilities, infinite variations, etc. The universe, has a size, shape and origin. There is a before and there may very well be an after.
Real big doesn’t mean infinite.

Nothingness, ironically does mean something. It is the absence of existence. That is not meaningless, that is a critically important definition. [/quote]

Not true. You are assuming the universe is continuous. Why is it impossible that the discontinuous and discrete?

29

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
Hmmm…

Some interesting ideas here, though most are a little off the mark. A few points:

  1. Time is not necessarily an “imaginary concept.” There are plenty of physicists who would argue that time and more importantly time symmetry is inexorably interwoven with electromagnetism. Their argument tends to reduce to the relationship between the electric dipoles of neutrons and their intrinsic direction of spin.

  2. In terms of defining the “universe;” It is also plausible that there are things outside of our universe. There are certainly things that are beyond what is our “observable universe,” things past our event horizon. As above, there is plenty of good science supporting multiverse theories.

  3. Time is also not guaranteed to be consistent in pace or even direction in all parts of our universe. Hawkins made a very good case for time literally flowing backwards in a black hole.

  4. Much of what troubles you with the concept of infinity could simply be the result of not having the proper context within which to consider it. Time and its behavior becomes a mathematical exercise at some point, and this may be the only way that we can interact with it that transcends our hard-wired perceptions of causality, etc… evolutionary tools suitable to our environment.

I’m near the end of a really fantastic book on just this topic; About TIme by Paul Davies. I can’t recommend it highly enough… in fact, pretty much everything I’ve read by him has been great. Though, Cosmic Jackpot stands out. I would almost say read that one first, then About Time.

[/quote]

It is imaginary in the sense it is not self defined.

I’m also not sure what you mean by our event horizon, last I’d heard we weren’t in one. Do you mean a light cone or something?

I think you are missing my point. Time is really just a label to describe the way we experience the universe. And yes, your point that time flow is perspective based actually furthers my point. Time even within the universe isn’t an absolute.

But my point is that the universe and existence define the concept of time, you cannot therefore apply that concept of time to help define the existence of the universe.

Time is nothing more than a dimension, but people always get hung up on it as if it is something more. It is nothing more than a length. Without the universe, which is necessary when discussing origin, time does not exist. You wouldn’t try to understand god (and other metaphysical concepts) by discussing how long, wide, or tall he (it) is. By the same token it doesn’t make sense to discus how old he is or when, in “universe time”, things started. Time is defined by the universe, things outside of the physical universe are timeless in the same way they are dimensionless. Origin of matter/energy is not and cannot be a scientific concept (in large part because it violates one or two of science’s basic axioms). You cannot apply scientific worldly principals to it. Origin isn’t a infinite in time concept, it is a timeless one, there is a difference.[/quote]

Our event horizon is the limit to what we will ever be able to observe, based on the speed of light. Because the universe is expanding, and at increasing speed, there are elements of the universe which are traveling fast enough and are far enough away from us that we will never be able to observe them…

And, not to be argumentative, but time can certainly be seen as self-defined and no less imaginary than thermodynamics, gravity, etc… The idea that time is a measurement that we have placed upon the physical world out of convenience has been eroding pretty much since Einstein began to struggle with a term he included in his equations; the cosmological constant.

it is possible that time will be proven to be exactly as you have described it, but this is not how it’s treated by all physicists.

At some level we are bound by our cognitive tools and are unable to conceptualize things like infinity and irreducibility outside of mathematical models. This makes them no less real.

The relationship between cause and effect that we cling to so fiercely could also be nothing more than a relic of our narrow range of experience.

30

Time describes a concept we inherently know. It adds no information in and of itself.

And I thought all events were observable in time with the exception of the destruction of continuity at a singularity.

Time is not an absolute. It is relative. You can measure 2 different amounts of time for an event and both be correct. If there is no truth to the absolute timing of a single small event, how does it make sense to try to classify the universe as a whole and pursue absolute truth on those terms?

31

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Time describes a concept we inherently know. It adds no information in and of itself. [/quote]

This is a useful definition of time for our every day dealings, but like I said it is not definitively how time is treated or viewed in terms of its effect on the physical world.

No. There are definitely things/events that will never be observable to us, not even given an infinite amount of time to attempt to observe them. The universe is expanding in all directions at increasing speeds. In order for us to be able to observe all things eventually, the universe would need to only be expanding away from us. However, we are part of that expansion.

if an object is moving away from us at more than half the speed of light, and we are moving away from that same object at more than half the speed of light… then, light will never overcome the distance between the two. Or, something like that… I can’t remember exactly what divisor of the speed of light defines this phenomenon… there is also a distance component.

The pace of time may not be absolute, but the direction of time creates absolute terms. The direction of time may in fact differ in various regions of the universe, or in differing universes in a multiverse scenario. However, the directional nature of time sets up defined behaviors/phenomena which determine how other forces (gravity, electromagnetism, etc…) behave.

Time and other forces like gravity do have relative qualities, but this does not mean that they are irrelevant or imaginary. It means that they effect the physical world relative to other forces.

32

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Magicpunch wrote:
Questions such as “can something come from nothing?” bother me - as I’m not up to date with scientific enquiry on this matter, I’m going to assume - for argument’s sake - that something cannot come from nothing.

And if the universe exists, then it came from something. But does my previous sentence imply that ‘something’ has always existed?

At this point, my head will generally spin out and I’ll attack the nearest person to me. Because the “something has always existed” takes me into the realm of infinity and beyond … (is it called infinite regression?)

I hope that ‘About Time’ book you mentioned deals with this scenario, as I’m about to order it![/quote]

No, something from nothing cannot happen. It is a mathematical, philosophical, scientific impossibility. Proponents will argue “Null Theory” but if examined not even that closely, you will see there is “something” not nothing there. Hawking will argue that he can imagine a universe being created “…without the need for God.” His reasoning? Gravity. Last time I looked in my untrained mind, gravity is a “something” not nothing. Further, current theory on what gives shit gravity are a combination of bosons and higgs particles, know as the boson-higgs particle, or …wait for it…“The God particle”.

Two things that are absent in the universe, nothingness and randomness. It does not exist at any level, realm, or parallel universe. Even the most far reaching and flakiest threories cannot remotely prove either exist or ever have.[/quote]

It is as I thought. And it spins me out.

Fair to say that something has always existed, then?

If so, then existence is so fascinating, creepy, inspiring, and mind-boggling and I’m infinitely sad that I may never “know the answer” (is if there ever was one!)

33

[quote]Magicpunch wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Magicpunch wrote:
Questions such as “can something come from nothing?” bother me - as I’m not up to date with scientific enquiry on this matter, I’m going to assume - for argument’s sake - that something cannot come from nothing.

And if the universe exists, then it came from something. But does my previous sentence imply that ‘something’ has always existed?

At this point, my head will generally spin out and I’ll attack the nearest person to me. Because the “something has always existed” takes me into the realm of infinity and beyond … (is it called infinite regression?)

I hope that ‘About Time’ book you mentioned deals with this scenario, as I’m about to order it![/quote]

No, something from nothing cannot happen. It is a mathematical, philosophical, scientific impossibility. Proponents will argue “Null Theory” but if examined not even that closely, you will see there is “something” not nothing there. Hawking will argue that he can imagine a universe being created “…without the need for God.” His reasoning? Gravity. Last time I looked in my untrained mind, gravity is a “something” not nothing. Further, current theory on what gives shit gravity are a combination of bosons and higgs particles, know as the boson-higgs particle, or …wait for it…“The God particle”.

Two things that are absent in the universe, nothingness and randomness. It does not exist at any level, realm, or parallel universe. Even the most far reaching and flakiest threories cannot remotely prove either exist or ever have.[/quote]

It is as I thought. And it spins me out.

Fair to say that something has always existed, then?

If so, then existence is so fascinating, creepy, inspiring, and mind-boggling and I’m infinitely sad that I may never “know the answer” (is if there ever was one!)
[/quote]

You are touching on the conundrums that drive modern physics, and it is a fascinating world. There are a lot of great sources of information out there, and there are well supported and valid theories that contradict what ALL of us have written here :slight_smile:

Another author who I like a lot is Neil Degrasse-Tyson. I read Death By Black Hole a number of years ago, and it really expanded my understanding of the universe. This book was actually the starting point for me in my interest in cosmology and astrophysics.

Incidentally, don’t get too spun about the name “God particle.” It’s definitely tongue-in-cheek.

34

I once heard eternity described something like this:

Take Mount Everest and put it on the moon. Once every million years, a pigeon flies over and scrapes its feet once on the top of the mountain. It then flies away, and nothing disturbs the mountain until the pigeon returns a million years later. When the mountain has worn away to dust from that simple scraping of the pigeon’s feet, that is one second of a minute in eternity. Now take that to the outer reaches of your mind.

Eternity is a really, really long time. When I thought about it, the idea of living forever lost some of its luster. Can you imagine the boredom after the first few trillion years?

My personal theory is that matter and energy have always existed. I don’t believe something can be created from nothing. It’s possible, but nothing in our present universe suggests it is very likely, and it would contradict the first law of thermodynamics. Given that, either the universe has always existed, or there is an infinite series of universes with no beginning and no end, depending how you define universe.

35

[quote]swoleupinya wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Time describes a concept we inherently know. It adds no information in and of itself. [/quote]

This is a useful definition of time for our every day dealings, but like I said it is not definitively how time is treated or viewed in terms of its effect on the physical world.

[/quote]
I know the science definition. and I know the way it is used.

Got anything to read on this?

Not really true. You even mentioned backwards time flow earlier. Even if it cannot flow backwards, singularities disrupt time continuity. Before and after a singularity are not continuous. before does not affect after, so time doesn’t really flow at a singularity. Additionally photons exist essentially outside of time. traveling at the speed of light, from their perspective time is stationary.

Nothing about time is absolute.

36

I think there’s evidence for both nothingness and randomness in the universe.

Wouldn’t nothingness be defined as the absence of matter, antimatter, and energy? Wouldn’t a vacuum in space be defined as nothingness?

On randomness, how do you explain the double slit experiment?

37

[quote]swoleupinya wrote:

[quote]Magicpunch wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Magicpunch wrote:
Questions such as “can something come from nothing?” bother me - as I’m not up to date with scientific enquiry on this matter, I’m going to assume - for argument’s sake - that something cannot come from nothing.

And if the universe exists, then it came from something. But does my previous sentence imply that ‘something’ has always existed?

At this point, my head will generally spin out and I’ll attack the nearest person to me. Because the “something has always existed” takes me into the realm of infinity and beyond … (is it called infinite regression?)

I hope that ‘About Time’ book you mentioned deals with this scenario, as I’m about to order it![/quote]

No, something from nothing cannot happen. It is a mathematical, philosophical, scientific impossibility. Proponents will argue “Null Theory” but if examined not even that closely, you will see there is “something” not nothing there. Hawking will argue that he can imagine a universe being created “…without the need for God.” His reasoning? Gravity. Last time I looked in my untrained mind, gravity is a “something” not nothing. Further, current theory on what gives shit gravity are a combination of bosons and higgs particles, know as the boson-higgs particle, or …wait for it…“The God particle”.

Two things that are absent in the universe, nothingness and randomness. It does not exist at any level, realm, or parallel universe. Even the most far reaching and flakiest threories cannot remotely prove either exist or ever have.[/quote]

It is as I thought. And it spins me out.

Fair to say that something has always existed, then?

If so, then existence is so fascinating, creepy, inspiring, and mind-boggling and I’m infinitely sad that I may never “know the answer” (is if there ever was one!)
[/quote]

You are touching on the conundrums that drive modern physics, and it is a fascinating world. There are a lot of great sources of information out there, and there are well supported and valid theories that contradict what ALL of us have written here :slight_smile:

Another author who I like a lot is Neil Degrasse-Tyson. I read Death By Black Hole a number of years ago, and it really expanded my understanding of the universe. This book was actually the starting point for me in my interest in cosmology and astrophysics.

Incidentally, don’t get too spun about the name “God particle.” It’s definitely tongue-in-cheek.
[/quote]

I better start reading then! I’ve never touched on the subject fully, since it was only two or three years ago that I was learning in a mosque not to question ‘how it all began’

My brain sometimes still gets stuck in that old ‘god did it’ gear and I stop asking.

Thanks for the insight/book suggestion.

38

[quote]forlife wrote:
I once heard eternity described something like this:

Take Mount Everest and put it on the moon. Once every million years, a pigeon flies over and scrapes its feet once on the top of the mountain. It then flies away, and nothing disturbs the mountain until the pigeon returns a million years later. When the mountain has worn away to dust from that simple scraping of the pigeon’s feet, that is one second of a minute in eternity. Now take that to the outer reaches of your mind.

Eternity is a really, really long time. When I thought about it, the idea of living forever lost some of its luster. Can you imagine the boredom after the first few trillion years?

My personal theory is that matter and energy have always existed. I don’t believe something can be created from nothing. It’s possible, but nothing in our present universe suggests it is very likely, and it would contradict the first law of thermodynamics. Given that, either the universe has always existed, or there is an infinite series of universes with no beginning and no end, depending how you define universe. [/quote]

Interesting thoughts. I want to go into these a bit more, but must finish some work now.

39

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]swoleupinya wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Time describes a concept we inherently know. It adds no information in and of itself. [/quote]

This is a useful definition of time for our every day dealings, but like I said it is not definitively how time is treated or viewed in terms of its effect on the physical world.

[/quote]
I know the science definition. and I know the way it is used.

Got anything to read on this?

Not really true. You even mentioned backwards time flow earlier. Even if it cannot flow backwards, singularities disrupt time continuity. Before and after a singularity are not continuous. before does not affect after, so time doesn’t really flow at a singularity. Additionally photons exist essentially outside of time. traveling at the speed of light, from their perspective time is stationary.

Nothing about time is absolute.

[/quote]

Well… there are many theories as to the nature of time. The point that I am trying to make to you is that the definition of time you have presented (time being imaginary and/or immutably relative) is not necessarily the correct one.

Here is the wikipedia page describing the observable universe:

I haven’t read through it in its entirety. I would also recommend (again) About Time by Paul Davies.

As to your point about singularities, I’m not sure what you are trying to describe. Please elaborate.

And on photons; you are assuming that the speed of light and time are inseparable. A photon (granting it intelligence) would measure time by the direction of its travel at the most basic level. Also, the speed of light is not instantaneous. It would need to be in order for what you say about photons to be true.

40

[quote]forlife wrote:
I think there’s evidence for both nothingness and randomness in the universe.

Wouldn’t nothingness be defined as the absence of matter, antimatter, and energy? Wouldn’t a vacuum in space be defined as nothingness?

[/quote]
No, space and time are still there.

[quote]

On randomness, how do you explain the double slit experiment?[/quote]

Random and predictable aren’t the same thing. But the result is not random.