Typhoid
12-04-2011, 03:20 PM
Share your ideas, views, thoughts, etc.
So I was doing some of my finest scientific thought today while taking a poop; I imagine this is how many of the big questions in life get answered.
But suddenly I had a thought. A "What if".
What if the Universe is curved?
I watch a lot of shows on space. It's always fascinated me. I've always looked up rather than straight ahead.
So I remembered back to a few things I've seen about light in space bending. Light only bends around gravity (In space), therefore the fact that light is bending around nothing at all (to some scientists) proves that anti-matter (or dark matter/dark energy, I forget which is which) exist, creating a gravitational distortion bending the light, making us able to see an invisible force.
But then I remembered back to a show I watched about the Titanic. The Titanic could see the light of the ship ahead of it, despite the fact the ship was far out of eyesight (due to the curvature of the Earth), however the light bent around the curvature because conditions were perfect, making the ship seem like it was completely visible, when all you could see was the light.
So I got to thinking, what if it's the same "type" of thing.
Continue following me, here. The Earth is obviously round, but if we stand on it it appears entirely flat. Get into an airplane and you can start to see the curve of the planet, stand on the moon and you can see that it's actually a sphere.
So what if the Universe is round (or some awkward shape,rippled, etc - rather than being 'perfectly infinite in all directions'), and we just have no clue because it's so ridiculously large compared to how infinitely small we are. We'd never be able to get the proper angle of perspective to see what it actually looks like, you know. If you build a bridge across the entire planet and drove all the way, you'd still not visibly know it's round. You'd just leave East and arrive from the West. (Obviously you could then just deduce the Earth was round, but I'm only talking visually.) You'd appear to have been driving at one angle, in one direction the entire time.
Edit:
This is where I get all space-fanboy.
Another thing I've thought about before after watching numerous things; a way to describe the big bang, and I've got it down to two different metaphors. Gotta cover my bases, right.
So first off, picture a can of springy snakes. That can has tons of stored up energy inside, but it has no room to expand. All of the can's worth of snakes are inside that can until you open the lid, and they go springing away from each other once they have the room to do so. You don't even have to remove the lid entirely. You just need to break the seal, as soon as you accomplish that, the force those snakes have stored up will just blow the lid off regardless.
Now this other one is a little different.
Take a dried-out puddle as the Universe. There's silt (matter) just chillin' around, not moving. Just staying in one spot. Suddenly (in every meaning of the word 'suddenly'), the dried-out puddle (Universe) fills with water (space/room to expand), stirring all the silt (matter). Some of the silt will congregate together [where it wouldn't before, because there was no room to do so, and no force to move it together] and form larger globules of silt while the rest just ebbs and flows (expands) with the current of the water (space) that blasted in. If you blast in enough water (space), it will appear that all there is around you is water (space), giving the appearance of a vacuum (for the metaphor; vacuum being the absence of matter - in this case silt).
I find that shit fun to think about.
So I was doing some of my finest scientific thought today while taking a poop; I imagine this is how many of the big questions in life get answered.
But suddenly I had a thought. A "What if".
What if the Universe is curved?
I watch a lot of shows on space. It's always fascinated me. I've always looked up rather than straight ahead.
So I remembered back to a few things I've seen about light in space bending. Light only bends around gravity (In space), therefore the fact that light is bending around nothing at all (to some scientists) proves that anti-matter (or dark matter/dark energy, I forget which is which) exist, creating a gravitational distortion bending the light, making us able to see an invisible force.
But then I remembered back to a show I watched about the Titanic. The Titanic could see the light of the ship ahead of it, despite the fact the ship was far out of eyesight (due to the curvature of the Earth), however the light bent around the curvature because conditions were perfect, making the ship seem like it was completely visible, when all you could see was the light.
So I got to thinking, what if it's the same "type" of thing.
Continue following me, here. The Earth is obviously round, but if we stand on it it appears entirely flat. Get into an airplane and you can start to see the curve of the planet, stand on the moon and you can see that it's actually a sphere.
So what if the Universe is round (or some awkward shape,rippled, etc - rather than being 'perfectly infinite in all directions'), and we just have no clue because it's so ridiculously large compared to how infinitely small we are. We'd never be able to get the proper angle of perspective to see what it actually looks like, you know. If you build a bridge across the entire planet and drove all the way, you'd still not visibly know it's round. You'd just leave East and arrive from the West. (Obviously you could then just deduce the Earth was round, but I'm only talking visually.) You'd appear to have been driving at one angle, in one direction the entire time.
Edit:
This is where I get all space-fanboy.
Another thing I've thought about before after watching numerous things; a way to describe the big bang, and I've got it down to two different metaphors. Gotta cover my bases, right.
So first off, picture a can of springy snakes. That can has tons of stored up energy inside, but it has no room to expand. All of the can's worth of snakes are inside that can until you open the lid, and they go springing away from each other once they have the room to do so. You don't even have to remove the lid entirely. You just need to break the seal, as soon as you accomplish that, the force those snakes have stored up will just blow the lid off regardless.
Now this other one is a little different.
Take a dried-out puddle as the Universe. There's silt (matter) just chillin' around, not moving. Just staying in one spot. Suddenly (in every meaning of the word 'suddenly'), the dried-out puddle (Universe) fills with water (space/room to expand), stirring all the silt (matter). Some of the silt will congregate together [where it wouldn't before, because there was no room to do so, and no force to move it together] and form larger globules of silt while the rest just ebbs and flows (expands) with the current of the water (space) that blasted in. If you blast in enough water (space), it will appear that all there is around you is water (space), giving the appearance of a vacuum (for the metaphor; vacuum being the absence of matter - in this case silt).
I find that shit fun to think about.