but that makes life so easy

True, but does it make worth living if it is easy? Seems to me life is empty if there is no challenge. The bigger the challenge you overcome the better your life is or at least feels. We measure ourselves by our accomplishments. If we accomplish nothing unique or nothing of note how is our life worth living?

Something can only be infinite when measured by a finite scale and when it's perceived to be expanding. Nothing is truly infinite but something can feel infinite given that the way it is measured can not measure it faster than it expands. Thus if you take a kid that can eat one candy per second and a factory that can produce two pieces of candy per second to the kid the amount of candy would seem infinite even if it has a finite number. However obviously the problem here is that sooner or later the factory producing the candy will run out of ingredients to make the candy.

There is however a loophole here as somehow the ingredients of the candy must have come to be so they could also be reproduced until whatever the ingredients are made of runs out which then again causes you to have to look at a even smaller scale where whatever creates the thing that creates the ingredients for the candy has some supply that may or may not run out. For this there are two scenarios, the candy is consumed and the ingredients it was made of split apart again to be reunited some day to create more candy. If this cycle happens faster than the consumption of candy happens then there can also been an infinite loop. However an infinite loop does not mean there is infinite candy. If the candy is stored and not consumed then at some point you will run out of ingredients to make candy.

Now if you keep taking smaller and smaller steps looking at all the things the candy is made up of then at the end of the line you will find something that would be the building block for all things which brings us to energy. There seems to be a universal agreement on that energy can not be created or destroyed, only converted. So could it be said there is a finite amount of energy ? Or is there something that we've not learned yet that makes this statement invalid. And how did the energy get there in the first place ? It is an endless loop of "what made it" with no end. But that is not important in this discussion, what's important is that if current theories as far as I know them are correct then there should be a finite amount of energy in the world considering energy can not be created nor destroyed. And with all matter made up of increasingly complex forms of energy you could say that nothing can truly be infinite. Even if all of the energy in the world went into creating candy, then at some point you'd need to create more energy to create more candy but as far as we (or at least I) know energy can not be created. So in the end nothing physical in any shape or form can be infinite, there is a limit to everything.

Only concepts can be infinite, like in math when we attempt to split something that can't be split with the base rules of our math, like 1/3, we end up with an endless rows of repeating 3's after the decimal.

But if nothing natural can be infinite we're left thinking "How can the natural world not be infinite ? If there is an end to it what will we find there ?" which leads me to think that perhaps I'm totally wrong and that something infinite can exist. In the end I'm not sure anyone can truly answer this question with 100% certainty.

it sure makes it boring. when things get easy, we get lazy. besides i don't trust that everyone would use their knowledge wisely

Time has been shown to have a correlation between how dense the gravity is. When approaching a black hole the gravity is so intense that time seems to stop to anyone outside the even horizon. Time isn't just the passage of events, its a fundemental principle of existance. Stephen Hawking has been quoted saying that time and space did not exist before the big bang.


Wow, I've never heard a pony say something that deep.

I've also never heard a pony talk either.

You realised you just proved my "perception and measuring" point right? Time would be probably be measured differently but it still would be equal to ours. Light would still travel at the same speed in a vacuum.

Yes. But what I was trying to indicate was that something that does not need to measure time would not have a concept of it. If it did not decay. if it did not change. Why would time exist for it? Why would it measure it? Why would measurements even be applicable to it. It has no perception except of outside effects. The way we commonly think of time IS a human construct. Time as Stephen Hawking defines it is not the commonly held belief, though it does make a great deal more sense than the conventional definition.

You can't answer it with certainty, it requires knowledge that we simply don't possess. We don't know what the end of the natural world is like. It might not be possible to ever reach it, infinite expansion being what it might be.
We know from reason that infinity can exist theoretically but not materially.

and that is what I meant by "Our perception and measuring of it is obviously."

That we perceive the passing of time proves that it exists independently of us, even if the changes we observed in the universe were just illusions that the illusions change over time would be proof enough of time's existence as an independent concept.

Nevermind, I am too hungover to think properly. I think I am responding to the wrong ideas.

We know almost nothing about the world we live in. There are many things we can't even comprehend, one example is pure nothingness, place that is not a place, one without time or anything. For all we know, our universe could be a single cell of an exponentially larger universe.

Time has to be frozen in order for everything to stop. The absence of time is another one of those things we can't comprehend, because we've never experienced it.

That would, of course, help to settle the energy issue. Everything needs a catalyst.

In this case, we have energy flowing freely and being repurposed. It has to be repurposed because energy cannot be created or destroyed. However, it has to flow freely between the multiple "cells" as you say since something has to be there for the catalyst. You then have the issue of the creation of energy, which could be done by particles. They themselves being brought into existence by the very potential of the ability for them to interact.

The issue then becomes the creation of the potential. Just by existing, there is potential for interaction. This doesn't solve the initial issue, but it does solve the other issues. The initial issue being where it all came to begin with. However, it does solve the major points.

Where it all came from could very well be attributed to the nothing interacting with itself and causing friction, thus building up the potential energy reserves, and satisfying the issue of creating potential.


Warning: I'm seeing rabbits, so not everything is as it appears.

Hence, it's because otherwise the universe would be broke.



And mother nature set up some pretty strict laws guidelines about breaking the universe..


-basically, you break it, you buy it.

Might as well ask how something finite can exist. Hell, existence itself would be theoretically impossible if we didn't see it before our very eyes.

Yes. Just start counting 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10...... and you will find it goes on forever. But I guess the debate then would be "are numbers real?"

I believe it is here that we have reached the limits of our earth-bound mental faculties.

Cool thread. Reminds me of the one I created about random, and these guys here enlightened me to determinism.In a very abstract sense, I suppose you have a point. In order for anything we can perceive to exist, it would have had to originate from some point in time where matter came into existence, or matter always existed, in either case we're lead to an infinite paradox. However, in a practical sense it is not true. We understand that there are many apples, but there was a point in time where apples - as we know them - began to grow, and there will be a point in time where they will, sadly, stop growing. I believe our idea of "infinite" is the logical progression of understanding what is finite. If there are ten apples on the ground, it's not much of a stretch of the imagination to think that there could be so many apples on the ground that they're unable to be counted or never ending. It's reminiscent of zero, or, as I mentioned, random - since, in my opinion, nothing is truly random.

Regarding the Big Bang, just to clarify for those who are unsure about how it works, the reason we believe that the Big Bang happened and that the universe is expanding is due to some scientist guy's observation that things out in space were moving away from each other. If things are moving away from each other, it only makes sense that at one point they were all compact.That really is the root of the issue. One day in the future I bet people will look back and laugh at how we never realized that X was always the origin. It is very likely, maybe even literally, right under our noses.
Do both! One thing, trust me I'm not much older than you (19), I'd have told myself when I was younger is to not rely on the opinions of those who are older. Frequently I'd be right, after further inspection, but have conceded the point because the older individual sounded as if they knew better. Don't sell yourself short, man!

I let the experts, like Hawking, answer these questions and I am content in the knowledge that humans are too inferior to ever truly understand the universe. I doubt humanity in its current form will ever find out what was before the universe and what becomes after it. Our minds simply cannot comprehend it.

As for how this all this came to be - it's the same. We will never, EVER know. All we can do is make educated guesses and write books about how a wizard did it.

Whoa, way to undermine the discussion.

I don't think nothing can exist. If it does, it's outside of our universe. Even thinking of nothing is thought, so it's not nothing. It can't ever be! Space is filled with particles and radiation zooming around and all this crazy stuff. Truth be told I think this nothing concept is all a big joke someone whipped up a long time ago and people took it way to seriously.

Infinity is a concept, nothing infinite actually exists - the universe is finite but unbounded.

How on earth (or indeed anywhere else) can something be proved to be infinite?
Since the only method of proving something is objective observation, nobody would live long enough to know, and secondly if it was infinite, it would always be a question.

It's ludicrous to think that infitnity *can* be proved.

I think it's better to just accept our limits and leave it at that.

Indeed the universe is ever expanding and is not infinite. Humans can only see it as an infinite world of discoveries and wonders.
It's impossible to be on the edge of universe, that's expanding faster than the eye can register.
You could say that the universe is infinite, earth is infinite for a little corn of sand. Earth is that corn of sand in the universe.