This is meant to be a purely scientific thread.
Please no comments about religion, be it good or bad.

I'm not a scientist, nor anything close to it, but I was thinking about this last night. If you see any fallacies in my post, please point it out.

I need help figuring this out. Whats wrong in my theory? There has to be something wrong.

How can something infinite exist?

Everything finite has to come from something infinite. Yet something infinite has to exist to give existence to the finite.
It can't exist because it doesn't have a progenitor. Thats the main problem with it, for me something just can't exist without anything preceding it.

The thought of something existing without something making it exist just seems impossible to me. I know the definiton of something infinite is something that has always existed and will always exist, but how?
So we get stuck in a paradox of having to exist, but not being able to.

The only thing I'm sure exists is myself and what I perceive to be reality.

I'm only 16, I should be worrying about getting laid, not the fundimental principles of existence. Maybe someone older can help me.

do we know that something infinite exists? i mean, is it proven or is it just a theory

Isn't that covered by the conservation of mass law? I don't think anything infinite does exist, though my knowledge on the subject is limited.

I still struggle to get my head around how the universe can be infinite and go on for eternity. Then I think about boobs and/or cake and everything's good again.

Have a look into "Sophism".

That's what you're essentially doing with your argument.

Hope that helps.

Az

I'm more than double your age and still worrying about getting laid

Anyway. Perhaps you should define existence first. It's more a logic topic than space science to me. Why would you think something finite has to come from something infinite? Can't finite comes from finite?

Isn't the Universe supposed to be infinite or just ever expanding?

My other thought is that we are just being human and trying to explain stuff

I'm pretty sure its a quote by some science guy, maybe Newton, but it goes like this: "Everything works the way it is supposed too, except when it doesn't"

Pretty sure the universe is infinate. It ither keeps expanding forever, or it will eventually start contracting again, and there will be another big bang.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

I didnt understand all of it... Most of it... But it seems the closest to an answer.

You seem to be asking about the possibility of a first cause... a cause which itself had no cause. It's really more a philosophical question than a scientific one.

I personally think the question arises simply out of our own inability to intuitively grasp the nature of reality. For instance, some physicists claim that time began with the Big Bang. So, what happened before the Big Bang? Well, that question actually doesn't make sense if time began with the Big Bang, because there was no "before". In order for there to be a "before", there must be time.

But we are not able to intuitively grasp the idea of time having beginning. Our minds tell us there must have been a "time" before time began, which is a paradox.

I like the theory of the universe being destroyed and replaced by another one once it gets old.

I guess atoms are kinda infinite. I'm probably constructed by atoms that have been recycled time after time since the first day of the universe. Nothing scientfific backing that statement though.

[€dit] removed some of my post.. nevermind that, I don't even believe in that myself..

Thats one of the problems I see with the big bang, I'm sure super smart scientists might have figured it out, but I haven't.
I recently saw a show were Stephen Hawking said that time did not exist before the big bang.

So how did the big bang happen? If there was no time, there would be no ability for the big bang to happen because everything would be stuck.


Than we sitll have the problem of where/how the first universe came into existance.

Its like going to the end of the universe. What marks the end? When space runs out and you hit a place of nonexistance? Is there still "nothingness" of space that just conitnues forever? Something infinite is uncomprehendable.

If it were infinite, it couldn't be expanding. That's like saying infinity plus one.

And its rate of expansion appears to be accelerating, so there will never be a big bang.

The universe is "infinite" in that it has no defined boundary. Geometrically that's hard to imagine. Think of it as being on the surface of a sphere. You can keep walking forever and never see a boundary, but you will eventually reach the same point again if you go in a straight line. Or like that Asteroids game, where when you hit the edge of the screen you'd appear on the other side. The universe is like that, only three-dimensional, and any direction will eventually lead you back to where you began.

I like the theory which Ratslayer briefly mentioned earlier. Our universe when our universe ended, known as the "Big Crunch" if I remember correctly.

On the subject of infinity I view it more as an abstract "thing." It exists but it isn't really tangible. For example i'm certain several Mathematical proofs involve infinity so to me that makes it unarguably true. Also Black holes have infinite density at their centre, which is the closest practical example I can think of.

You can have bigger infinities than others btw.

How's that?

Precisely. The real question is why is it incomprehensible. Is it because it is impossible? Or is it because our brains are not equipped with the apparatus necessary to understand something so far outside our sphere of experience?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_hotel is a good example. I can't think of a way to word it. I'm certain if I do i'll look like a (bigger) fool.

That's a paradox derived from attempting to map finite concepts onto an infinite design. If the hotel is infinite, by definition it goes on forever and can't be any bigger.

There's an infinite amount of numbers, come on try and count to ∞ I dare you.

This probably is incorrect but there an equally infinite amount of even and odd numbers respectively, I would argue while there is an infinite amount of say prime numbers there are more odd/even numbers. Ah infinity makes my head hurt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7e0777z7AY

we don't KNOW though big bang is also just a theory.

Yea I can agree with this. Something infinite is just something that is finite, but it's very long.

No.

By definition, for something to be infinite it has to go on http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_D_Z-D2tzi14/TBptrVKv1tI/AAAAAAAADHE/F2LJp4-_Mpk/s1600/responsibility16.png.

Irrational numbers are infinite and are backed up by mathematical proofs (You can't argue with proofs either). For example root 2.

Exactly. However, the Universe had to have come from something. And that something had to come from something else. Somethings just don't appear out of nowhere. However, since there's always been somethings then there's never been nothing. But if there's never been nothing, why is the Universe even here? It just can't be, it had to come from something.

Yes, this is sounding a bit odd, but bare with me here. If there was nothing to create the Universe, or any other Universes since there had to be something to begin with and that had to come from something, then we don't exactly exist.



Actually, you can. Thing is, you don't know if something goes on forever. You won't ever know. By definition, it has no end. Therefore, you can't know if it has an end or not. It may have an end, it might just take a very long time to hit that point.


Well, that was interesting to type up to say the least