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Recently I thought about how why is space so empty? Why isn’t the universe like a Minecraft world that is infinite with height and depth limits?
It’s empty because apparently the space between planets, asteroids, stars, galaxies, etc is expanding. Has been since the beginning of the universe. Why? We don’t know.
Why? The bigbang never stopped, we are living in a still rapidly expanding explosion. That's why everything is moving apart with (I think?) 50m/s. I might be completely wrong but that's what I remember
It actually depends on distance! So something that’s farther away is moving faster. It’s about 70km/s/megaparsec, which means that for every light year you are away from something, it’s moving away from you by about 0.1km/h
That's actually way slower than I expected
Until you realize most things in the universe are at least a couple million light-years away from you, so that adds up fast.
And the universal timescale is in the range of millions or billions of years
The big bang according to theory - was followed, for a split second, by an expansion infinitely bigger than the current expansion. Today's expansion rate is really slow.
Ball of plasma**
I mean fire is basically plasma, just not made entirely of charged particles
Apparently there’s a debate around this. Fire might be plasma, gas, (or maybe a liquid) or just a reaction with no particular state, but it’s super hard to define
We are all so incredibly lucky. Would anybody else be happy with me?
I'll be happy with you.
When you throw a stone and go see where it landed, it's actually crazy that it landed on that exact spot where it did. Imagine the odds!
The amount of time and effort to be at this exact moment and self aware, is in fact, crazy.
Bill Bryson?
Ball of Plasma*
I think it's crazy that a bunch of inanimate matter and electrons band together and somehow says "You know what, fuck chaos, fuck entropy, fuck the natural order of the universe, fuck death and especially, fuck non-existence... we'll make our own order, with blackjack and hookers!"
A bunch of inanimate matter and electrons created diagrams of themselves
Think it's random or what?
Yes and no? While it's certain that the universe always go toward higher entropy, and chaos and destruction are certainties, but also we have natural crystal lattices of many elements, stars made up of nuclear reactions, chemical reactions on uninhabitable planets, etc... show that it's not all random and things do gravitate toward order, which probably have something to do with how the electrons interact with each other.
A person who's knowledgeable about quantum mechanic might tell you otherwise though.
These organizational processes are driven by entropy. This is to say that they are steps the universe takes to further increase entropy, and that this organization up to this point has led to life as we know it. We are the result of a universe reorganizing all of it's energy into a state of harmony.
I guess that makes sense. Why just creating big ripples on a lake when you can create smaller ripples that gives rises to more ripples. Comparing to the fusion reactions happening in the core of a star, life isn't all that strange.
They actually recently found out that if you remove electrons from atoms they will seek out their original atoms. And they have no idea how or why.
Got a source for that?
Why do you assume the universe is nihilistic
Define "nihilistic". As in lack of meaning? Meaning is a human concept, it has nothing to do with how the universe functions. Stars go supernova, entire galaxies are reduced to dust and that's a regular occurrence. In the scale of time and space, what happens on this planet might as well be a fart in the storm. I don't think most people can truly comprehend how small and insignificant we are.
When you see a beautiful painting, you don't think that it formed naturally. Likewise, I don't understand how you can look at the universe and think it formed randomly.
"Forming randomly" isn't the same as being "nihilistic", I don't think understand what that overused word really means. It's a strong buzzword to automatically condemn people who thinks and explore instead of just do nothing and obey. I recommend not using it anywhere outside of a church where everyone thinks alike.
It is a fact that the universe is heading toward increasing entropy, most physics and math models for the last 2000 years have worked toward determining that. If you leave a cup of ice with uniform water crystal lattices structure out in the air, it evaporates and that system naturally increase in energy and random movement of molecules. Same for our Sun (and like most stars), in around 5 billion years it stops having enough hydrogen atoms to undertake fusion reactions, and start to take in heavier atoms and inflate itself, gets hotter and more disorderly and engulf Earth. Give it another 10 billion years it will consume this solar system but that's not enough to carry out its reaction, so it will shed itself and die (hopefully our species have made it out by then). And this goes for most things in the universe, they become less orderly given time. You can learn a lot of things reading books other than the Bible.
And as someone pointed out, while entropy drives everything, it also forms orderly processes so it can drive a harmony of disorders, like smaller ripples on a lake that tend to create more ripples. The more the human race learn about quantum theory im sure the more it will be even more confusing.
And beauty is also a very human concept and I'm sure our religious hubris has its own definition.
And more importantly we still have no idea how or even why the brain works. We know it's electricity fat and neurons....but like why does it do what it does and how
“Go bender, go bender”
What is the origins of existence? What happened before the Big Bang? These are questions I wonder myself.
Why is there something rather than nothing?
For the first question: it implies existence has an origin, while it might just "be" as a default state without instantiation. To put it simply, we define "existence" roughly as the category of things that "are". And since everything "is", existence "is" too, by default.
If you mean it as the typical "why is there something rather than nothing?", my take is that "nothing" can not "be", since you need a property to "be". Nothing, as it has not properties, can not "be", so "something" is the only thing that can "be", hence, existence.
For the second part, the question doesn't make any sense. "Before" is a word meaning "prior in the timeline". Since the big bang is the beginning of the timeline", the word "before" doesn't work. Just like "outside space", since "outside" is referring to a space too.
I have no studies, so don't quote me, but I ponder a lot and I like these questions. They're generally lost in semantics and we ask them because they make intuitive sense, but when you look at them closely the words fall apart.
Now I have more questions than before. But I heard of a theory too that the universe maybe bounces, it’s called Big Bounce and involves the Big Crunch (when the universe starts contracting) and after contracting a lot, creates another Big Bang and happens all the time, the theory says too that we could live in the first Big Bang or maybe one of the thousands of them.
It's most probably not our case, since we live in what is called a "flat" universe. If you like the topic, there's a super cool video called "a brief history of everything" from Forrest Valkai that starts with the universe and ends with us as species. Strongly recommended :)
While I respect your theory I must say that we don‘t generally see that. In our life we can observe that all life is based on cause and effect. The big bang is a great example for that. As we were able to measure the big bang and know for certain that there was something like that scientists went on to say okay then there HAD to be a singularity before that because everything is based on causal chains they would never say that the big bang just „was“ - no there had to be something before that.
Ultimately in my opinion no answer can run from the theory of the first cause as it is very compelling to the standard of our knowledge right now. And if you now tell me: but the first cause had to be an uncaused cause so it must be something that just „was“ I say yea but we see that literally everything around us „grew to be“ and I scientifically believe that the infinite regress is something that cannot be the case as it would be illogical.. So therefore I believe in an uncaused cause being the first cause in the causal chain of existance rather than there being „nothing“ and then „something“
The underlying “true” vacuum is eternal. There is a structure that has always been there.
“Nothing” can’t exist.
The universe we live in is a “false” vacuum state within that eternal “true” state.
Things like quantum fluctuations can and do happen in both vacuum states.
The Big Bang was a quantum fluctuation. A random occurrence in a seemingly empty vacuum that wasn’t actually empty.
Doesn't sound so crazy to me, existing is way more likely than not existing. I have literally never met anyone who didn't exist.
Put infinite monkeys in a room with typewriters and eventually they'll write Shakespeare.
I have met a lot of people that have since ceased to exist. So non-existence seems plausible to me.
Just because they dead don’t mean they gone. They just bones now.
Nothing ceases to exist, its matter just transforms into new matter. The food you ate today contains the energy of a million people who died at some distant point in the past. You are them and they are you, as they became the soil that provides life to your food. And you will eventually do the same.
the fact that we exist as humans is really the crazy part. only we know how crazy is really is
Imagine how lucky we are to not have been the napkin load…
"The fact that we even exist is crazy"-human brain
What do you mean? Only you exist. This is just a simulation you're trapped in.
Solipsism is technically a form of holocaust denial and is therefore illegal in Germany.
Only you exist, this is just a simulation*
*: Some restrictions apply, not valid in Germany
If I try to be as rational as possible I always have to accept that solipsism seems really plausible.
Honestly I also think it’s plausible that not even I exist. Like maybe nothing exists and consciousness is some kind of random illusion?? idk
If rationality is your goal then a solution to the problem of hard solipsism isn’t necessary. Until you can know whether or not the reality you experience is true, you merely have to behave as if it is since you face the consequences of not doing so.
Only people who actually exist can even ponder the question, so it’s not really that mysterious
It's not so much that we exist, but what our existence consists of. We are the universe observing itself.
It’s pretty mysterious considering the possibility of nothing ever existing
Even if you don’t think it’s mysterious it’s still crazy
How could nothing have been a possibility?
How could anything have been a possibility?
I don’t know. But it was and is apparently so. Either way that is not an answer to my question.
There is no answer to either of our questions
I agree with that statement and yet you were the one to make the claim that nothing was a possibility. Are you saying you made an unjustified claim?
It’s a possibility in the sense that it is conceivable. You can imagine nothing ever having existed
Imagination does not equal possibility. I can conceive of something that would be bigger on the inside but that doesn’t make that possible. Possibility is something that would need to be demonstrated. If you claim it is possible, you must demonstrate why that is the case.
Well, if there is some mechanism that determines what potential universes are or are not possible, that would have to exist a-priori to the existence of any universe. But that doesn’t really make sense, how can something exist without a universe?
Would the word "possibility" mean anything if nothing existed? There would be no words, no thought, no likelihood of anything happening because there wouldn't be anywhere or anything, or any time.
Nothing existing would mean logic doesn’t exist. This is where things start to get a little funky.
Honestly this line of thinking pushes me to seriously consider trivialism. If you don’t know what trivialism is, it is the philosophy that says ‘every statement is true’. It creates all sorts of logical contradictions, such as the fact that the statement ‘trivialism is false’ would then be true, but trivialism is just.. ok with logical contradictions.
In fact, trivialism is a logical consequence of a contradiction.
Stop listening to your face mites, take your own advice now.
What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all 'round the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all
-Neutral Milk Hotel "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"
Semen stains the mountaintops
Does anyone other than me exist?
Do even you exist? Does even the word exist exist?
The fact that ANYTHING exists is crazy and no one will probably ever know why or how.
You will never be aware of your non existence. We are all there is
Why did the universe even bother to be here? That is to say, why is there something instead on nothing?
The fact that we think we live for a purpose is therefore more crazy.
The real mind-blowing thing is when you realize you don't even have a self. The thing you're referring to as a self is an amalgamation of many things both physically and experientially.
How strange it is to be anything at all
How strange it is to be anything at all
Yeah, almost like it’s… unbelievable
Shit happens, and there are number of lifeless rocks out there showing that it’s a numbers game. I don’t see it as a sign of fate, it just seems that way because it happened, and we want to feel like it was on purpose.
Now that we know we exist it would be even more crazy if we didn't exist
I think about this every night before sleeping....I only fall asleep at 3 am
How do you know you exist?
Maybe, but what isn't crazy is that anyone who can think that, by definition exists.
Get outta the shower brother /s
We're the expected outcome of the universe
How come this post gets approved and mine doesn't?
How much weed have you smoked today?
No shit Sherlock. The very probability of the very same atoms that compose our body to be arranged in a way that allows us to think and be alive is so low that there's no mathematical expression to explain it.
Maybe I'm not getting it, but since it did happen it had to happen so the chance of it happening is 100%?
Idonu
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The fact that we exist, on a rock that in soaring through space, spinning around a ball of fire, at this moment in time, privileged enough to be reading this, is in fact, crazy.