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Scale of the Universe

(scaleofuniverse.com)
249 points Leftium | 3 comments | 19 Apr 24 03:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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NayamAmarshe ◴[19 Apr 24 09:32 UTC] No.40084790[source]▶
I love the end of it, just a big circle of random static noise. Looking at stuff like this always brings up the question of why does anything exist at all?
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kromem ◴[19 Apr 24 10:13 UTC] No.40084978[source]▶
The counterpoint to that thought is why we should think non-existence is even possible. There doesn't seem to be any indication that nothing could exist other than our capacity to imagine it being so.

It's what's so annoying with people arguing about "something from nothing."

Even a vacuum has zero point energy. The idea that there could even be 'nothing' at any point in time is arguably a bigger leap of faith than the notion of some deity for whose sake it is being argued as a presupposition.

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ddj231 ◴[19 Apr 24 13:22 UTC] No.40086509[source]▶
The issue is that even in your framing “…’nothing’ at any point in time…” is at odds with the Big Bang theory which says time had a beginning. How do you conceive what was there ‘before’ the universe came to existence? (In the absence of matter, space, time and energy)
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kromem ◴[19 Apr 24 14:01 UTC] No.40086949[source]▶
That's a common misconception. The big bang theory does not say that there wasn't stuff before the big bang.

Simply that our local version of spacetime expanded in the great inflation.

And I'm not sure if you've been following the news on it, but there's some serious issues with the theory at the moment.

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1. pixl97 ◴[19 Apr 24 15:31 UTC] No.40088088[source]▶
It doesn't matter which 'serious issues' exist, no one has any explanation for why the future points to a high entropy version while the past point to a low entropy version. You can have issue with any particular issue of the big bang theory, but no matter what you put forth you have to answer the very hard question of 'why was entropy low', being that we know of no way in our current universe to reset entropy.
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2. marcosdumay ◴[19 Apr 24 19:23 UTC] No.40090987[source]▶
You mean stuff like this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_inflation

People don't spend much time on those theories because they are inherently of little practical consequence. What includes that they are also not clearly testable.

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3. NayamAmarshe ◴[19 Apr 24 20:41 UTC] No.40091673[source]▶
Even physics has limits because our physical reality and approach has limits. Not everything can be a controlled experiment, especially things that are way beyond what our senses allow.

So in the end, everybody's theory holds 'almost' the same weight. We're all clueless, yay!