Explain the 3-Sphere to me.

[Tiki Tom]

ignition achieved! One important step closer to fusion energy. Potentially a huge step forward for humanity: unlimited clean energy. This could a game changer…. But I hope they also have a team looking for the inevitable “down side”. (Cynicism? A healthy dose of caution? Or perhaps it is just experience speaking. Too many trips around the sun.)

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-major-nuclear-fusion-milestone-ignition.html

 

[Tiki Tom]

Wait. I’m confused. Distant parts of the universe are expanding much faster than the speed of light?. (See bulleted paragraph containing red text. half way through the text.)

Ask Ethan: How fast is space expanding?

Yes, the Universe is expanding, but you might wonder, "how fast is it expanding?" Here's what you need to know.

bigthink.com

Doesn‘t that violate Einstein’s theory of special relativity? Meaning that you can’t go faster than the speed of light? Or am I looking at it the wrong way? Is it that nothing is actually breaking the speed limit, or is even moving in fact? Is the stretching of space-time itself a loophole in the speed limit?

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Wait. I’m confused. Distant parts of the universe are expanding much faster than the speed of light?. (See bulleted paragraph containing red text. half way through the text.)

Ask Ethan: How fast is space expanding?

Yes, the Universe is expanding, but you might wonder, "how fast is it expanding?" Here's what you need to know.

bigthink.com

Doesn‘t that violate Einstein’s theory of special relativity? Meaning that you can’t go faster than the speed of light? Or am I looking at it the wrong way? Is it that nothing is actually breaking the speed limit, or is even moving in fact? Is the stretching of space-time itself a loophole in the speed limit?

After giving this about 30 seconds of deep thought, the only understanding I can get is that light is a phenomenon of space-time. That is, it exists in space-time. In some way I can't articulate it seems to me that things that exist is space-time have a set of rules to obey, but space-time itself is beyond those bounds.

Waiting for the astrophysicists of the Lounge to correct me.

 

[Harp]

Wait. I’m confused. Distant parts of the universe are expanding much faster than the speed of light?.

Doesn‘t that violate Einstein’s theory of special relativity? Meaning that you can’t go faster than the speed of light? Or am I looking at it the wrong way? Is it that nothing is actually breaking the speed limit, or is even moving in fact? Is the stretching of space-time itself a loophole in the speed limit?

Einstein lived in the last century and his E=MC2 equation while correctly succinct
was derived at a time when bomb loads released over enemy target eluded definitive
velocity Calculus application derivative answer. Supersonic speed achieved by mass
relative to altitude irrespective of weight per Galileo also renders altitude irrelevant,
leaving velocity supposedly within mathematical reason. However, if light itself can
escape quantifiable deduction its speed remains beyond rational answer, leaving
approximate conjecture; which brings mankind to the mathematical frontier of limit.

 

[MisterCairo]

This problem was solved in the 1980s.

 

[MisterCairo]

Wouldn't a universe that ran backward in time still be moving forward in time from its own perspective, and OUR universe would be the one running backward in time from their perspective? Are universes just another variation on the whole drains-in-Australia thing?

And therefore, is the real answer to the question of time travel just a matter of "reversing the polarity?" Because if it is, the Third Doctor had that figured out fifty years ago.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Wouldn't a universe that ran backward in time still be moving forward in time from its own perspective, and OUR universe would be the one running backward in time from their perspective? Are universes just another variation on the whole drains-in-Australia thing?

And therefore, is the real answer to the question of time travel just a matter of "reversing the polarity?" Because if it is, the Third Doctor had that figured out fifty years ago.

Well, it has been PROVEN (again) that time is elastic. It is proven that time can be sped up or slowed down. Think about that. If it can be accelerated or slowed, doesn’t it theoretically follow that time can be stopped or shifted into reverse?

The other unmentioned part of this story is how insanely precise clocks are becoming. Is there a limit to these improvements? Or, can the continuous improvement of time dicing theoretically go into infinity?

Scientists Make Breakthrough in Warping Time at Smallest Scale Ever

Scientists were able to measure time dilation at a distance of just a millimeter, about the width of a pencil tip.

www.vice.com

 

[Harp]

Well, it has been PROVEN (again) that time is elastic. It is proven that time can be sped up or slowed down. Think about that. If it can be accelerated or slowed, doesn’t it theoretically follow that time can be stopped or shifted into reverse?

No. Time can be cut down as measure within infinitude but quantum decoherence and measurement
as deterministic phenomena is a violation of Bell' inequalities and agree standard quantum mechanics.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Well, it has been PROVEN (again) that time is elastic. It is proven that time can be sped up or slowed down. Think about that. If it can be accelerated or slowed, doesn’t it theoretically follow that time can be stopped or shifted into reverse?

The other unmentioned part of this story is how insanely precise clocks are becoming. Is there a limit to these improvements? Or, can the continuous improvement of time dicing theoretically go into infinity?

Scientists Make Breakthrough in Warping Time at Smallest Scale Ever

Scientists were able to measure time dilation at a distance of just a millimeter, about the width of a pencil tip.

www.vice.com

Here's an explanation of Planck length:
If I understand it, there is no distance (in the "real world") shorter than that. While mathematics can posit an infinitely divisible distance, physics says it ain't so.
No clock can ever be more accurate than the time it takes light to travel a Planck length.

 

[Tiki Tom]

God’s existence proven with Mathematics?
learned something new today: Google the “Mandelbrot Set”. Not being a hardcore math geek, I found the short YouTube primers on the topic to be the most helpful and eye opening.
In short, the Mandelbrot Set is a short formula designed to (in my own uneducated layman’s terms) isolate numbers that remain relatively stable at low numbers when squared plus one repeatedly. Something like that. Simple, right?
Well, when the formula was first developed, it was not that big of a deal because the math had to be done manually and the data set was small. Yes, there seemed to be a pattern, but it wasn’t earth shaking.
Then, in the 1980s, computers were developed that were powerful enough to do millions of these calculations and plot them.
The result is astounding. The patterns are very intricate, beautiful, balanced, and repeating… apparently to infinity. Drilling down, it looks like fine delicate lace.
It is a true testament to the order of the universe.
Of course, some one had to see the fingerprint of God in all this. I am simply confounded by the beauty of it. Though it is probably as good an argument for the existence of God as any I have heard.
Who needs drugs, when you have mathematics?

 

[Tiki Tom]

^^^^^ Regarding the Mandelbrot Set, one commentator Was moved to quote Dante:

In its profundity I saw — ingathered
and bound by love into one single volume —
what, in the universe, seems separate, scattered:

substances, accidents, and dispositions
as if conjoined — in such a way that what
I tell is only rudimentary.

I think I saw the universal shape
which that knot takes; for, speaking this, I feel
a joy that is more ample.

-Dante’s Paradiso, Canto 33


https://medium.com/swlh/a-meditation-on-the-mandelbrot-set-45fcb52ab673

 

[Tiki Tom]

Here's an explanation of Planck length:
If I understand it, there is no distance (in the "real world") shorter than that. While mathematics can posit an infinitely divisible distance, physics says it ain't so.
No clock can ever be more accurate than the time it takes light to travel a Planck length.

My head spins. Now MIT scientists say they can make a clock so accurate it will only ”be off by less than 20 milliseconds over THE LIFE OF THE UNIVERSE” and it somehow utilizes something called quantum time reversal.

https://scitechdaily.com/mit-physic...etecting-gravitational-waves-and-dark-matter/

As I said, my head spins. I will have to take their word for it.

 

[Tiki Tom]

More and more I’m seeing articles claiming that space and time are not fundamental (i.e., they are expressions of a deeper reality.) From the article: “Entanglement implies that the universe is “monistic”, as the philosophers call it, that on the most fundamental level, everything in the universe is part of a single, unified whole.”

https://www.yahoo.com/now/why-more-physicists-starting-think-045308127.html

Begs the question, what is the “fundamental” stuff of the universe?

 

[Tiki Tom]

As a smart Alec teenager, I once asked a teacher “what happened before the Big Bang?” His response: “back to the Big Bang, ask a physicist. Before that, ask a theologian.”

The first six paragraphs of this article sums up our understanding pretty well.

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-multiverse-universe-suspiciously-existunless-physicist.html

After that he kinda falls back on the currently fashionable view: Life in this universe is statistically so unlikely that it is most likely that there are zillions of other universes out there that are incapable of supporting life; we just got lucky and happen to be in one of the rare ones that are capable of supporting life.

Okay, okay. That’s a fair conjecture, as far as that goes. But I am a little chagrined that he doesn’t even mention an equally fair competing conjecture: That our universe is so finely tuned because it was designed that way by “a designer” of some sort. (“God”, if you will.) Both conjectures are equally untestable …so, why not give the “Intelligent Design Hypothesis“ at least a small Mention? A sentence or two?

By the way, saying that there is probably a multiverse only pushes back the problem a level. Where did the multiverse come from? What instigated it? Has it always been there and is somehow outside of time? Is it “turtles all the way down”?

I do like his theoretical speculation that, in essence, the Big Bang is on-going.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Covid-19 is metaphorical reference. As relation yin-yang, macro and micro economics, and whatever invisible hand actually moves this universe, divine higher proofs dictate attentive respect.

 

[Tiki Tom]

For those of you just opening this thread:
This thread is about questioning the very nature of REALITY.
Okay, that’s a big ask. (And it’s interesting to read the earlier comments.)
Some say it boils down to the following: Did consciousness emerge from the fundamental reality of space/time/matter? Or did space/time/matter emerge from the fundamental reality of consciousness?
This guy, Dr Donald Hoffman, is one of the smartest guys I know on the topic. He delves into it mathematically, but can discuss it in laymen’s terms.
Anyway, if you are at all interested in the topic, listen to the first two or three minutes of this interview and you may get hooked. Yes, he will answer the questions that arise from his first bold and shocking statements.
Whether or not you agree with him is another matter.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

This thread is about questioning the very nature of REALITY.
Okay, that’s a big ask. (And it’s interesting to read the earlier comments.)
Some say it boils down to the following: Did consciousness emerge from the fundamental reality of space/time/matter? Or did space/time/matter emerge from the fundamental reality of consciousness....

Last month's running of the Derby really boiled down to weather whethers. A rain soaked dirt track turned mudey murder ultimately evolved horse psychological mindset emerged from
chance space, time, and matter. Now Fierceness is a mercurial thoroughbred, whom can cop attitude standing atop a bone dry fast dirt oval. A sealed rain circle is muck. So Fierce was, rhymes muck, and just went along for the ride coming in fifteenth. Just didn't give a .... in the muck.
A fundamental reality followed space/time/matter.

 

[Tiki Tom]

You know how we’ve been fed the theory that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate and that we need dark matter or dark energy to explain it? Well now, thanks in part to the James Webb Space Telescope, it seems that mysterious acceleration may not be happening at all. Introducing “the tired light theory.”

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-century-theory-big.html

i like this article Because it explains it in understandable terms.

 

[Leather_nube]

A little ammo for those who argue that we exist in a computer simulation: Humanity is now taking baby steps towards building such simulations ourselves... “A team of astrophysicists has just spawned 8 million unique universes inside a supercomputer and let them evolve.”

https://www.livescience.com/universe-machine-probes-dark-matter.html

Says the scientist: "For me, the most exciting thing is that we now have a model where we can start to ask all of these questions in a framework that works," Wechsler said. "We have a model that is inexpensive enough computationally, that we can essentially calculate an entire universe in about a second. Then we can afford to do that millions of times and explore all of the parameter space."

Little does he know that simulated life is forming on some of those planets in those computer models. Bwaa ha ha!

The simulated civilizations are now creating their own simulations. It’s simulations all the way down

 

[Leather_nube]

Wait. I’m confused. Distant parts of the universe are expanding much faster than the speed of light?. (See bulleted paragraph containing red text. half way through the text.)

http://[URL]https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/fast-space-expanding/

[/URL]

Doesn‘t that violate Einstein’s theory of special relativity? Meaning that you can’t go faster than the speed of light? Or am I looking at it the wrong way? Is it that nothing is actually breaking the speed limit, or is even moving in fact? Is the stretching of space-time itself a loophole in the speed limit?

Yeah I think that was it. The distances are increasing faster than the speed of light but because the distances are large and little bits of space are being added to space (so the theory). When then the distances between two objects is large enough, all those little bits of added space means they are separating faster than the speed of light.