Space and The wonders/mysteries of The Universe

There are answers, we may just never find them.

I dont know if the state of nothing (not science nothing, but that actually absence of anything) could exist. 

I dont know what the universe is expanding in to if there is nothing beyond it or if there is something beyond that it is expanding in to and how far that goes.

I think one of these propostions is true though:

A) Something has always existed.
B) At one point nothing existed and something was created (and I am not suggesting intelligently as that would by definition require something already).

Maybe there is a propostion C that is beyond that and I can't grasp... very likely with physics, whether in universe or not.

The universe IS space, it doesn't have to expand IN to anything. The properties of space itself are changing.

I think people who have a certain amount of training in physics learn to pick their battles - the need to accept quantum mechanics has bludgeoned away the appetite to ask certain types of philosophical questions that go outside the math. If you've got a model that says other universes are right next to ours in a certain quantum foam, then that's your answer. If your model only includes the current universe, you don't bother asking about what's outside, because there's no answer. There's enough other things to worry about.

The universe is space but it doesn't make sense that it can get larger without having anything to get larger in to.

A bad analogy for a variety of reason, but a balloon doesn't expand in to nothing, there has to be room outside of it to expand.

How can the universe be different? If there is nothing outside of it then what happens when you get to the edge? Is there a barrier? Even if there is, what is on the other side of that edge?

As I understand it, the problem is that this universe is our version of space and we have a sample size of 1 to work with so anything outside of this means that no mathematical model or testable scenario is possible since we don't don't know what is capable of being outside of our version of it all.

Unless we find out we are part of a bigger system that we can engage with at some point....

I'll make a religious analogy. If God is everywhere, what's outside God? Nothing.

If space IS the measuring stick, then there's nothing to measure outside. If space came labelled with ticks for every meter, then once space stops there's no more ticks. The number of ticks can increase as space expands, but IT's the thing that's expanding, there's no measurement system outside because there's nothing to measure, not even space. "outside" effectively has no meaning.

But that's for the limited one universe view.

I think humans need answers, because our brains are evolved to overcome problems, whether it be poking a stick into an ant nest to winkle them out, or how to survive on an alien planet. Our brains work in a very logical and scientific way, but we are limited by our animal brains, and that maybe, is what limits our way of solving problems in space, we are great at solving things on earth, it gets tricky when we try to solve the mind blowing stuff in space. But maybe that's why sci-fi is so popular because its our attempt to solve the impossible. I think there are things so mad in space we could never understand them, like being confronted by God, His/Her/Its power is so immense we cant look upon it without getting fried. I always think this is why Space odyssey 2001 went trippy at the end, no film maker could explain the weirdness.

Both ends of of the spectrum: the very small defies our animal brains as well.

And they're linked: particle physics comes into play during the formative period of the universe. All the incomprehensibles gang up in cosmology. And our universe exists on the edge of a knife: tune the parameters just a little one way and the stars go out; tune it another way and the universe collapses before things really get going.

So we come to the Anthropic principle: the universe is carefully tuned so that we can exist, but is there any other reason why we have these particular parameters, or is it all random and of course we have the universe we need or we wouldn't be around to ask the question?

My gut feeling tells me it's random, but that brings up the possibility of multiple universes which contradicts my other gut feeling that there's only one.

Your middle paragraph is essentially the argument for God, but it presumes that the universe is tuned so that we can exist, not that we exist as a by-product.

To use the puddle analogy (lots of analogies today!!), if a puddle woke up in a hole it may think the whole was designed for it because the dimensions so precisely fit. Something must have designed the hole because how else could it be so perfect. 

The universe may seem designed for something (I would argue we are one of the last things on the possible list) but the questions then become could it have been different, if it was different what could that mean, how different could it be etc.

Most questions lead to our existence but gets us no closer to the answer it seems!

On the evolution point, we are evolved to deal with the challenges that human/pre-human existence has thrown at us. We look to see patterns in certain ways and react accordingly. Like Halfy says, both the super small and super big pose the same problem as we just are not wired to deal with it easily.

{{ Well we will never know what, if anything is outside the universe, or even if it has an edge, as its expanding away from us at such a speed that even the light from it will never reach us, so we can never see it.

My own view is that the universe is eternal, it just changes shape and form every so often. }}

I agree we are conditioned to look for patterns, like we are conditioned to see faces in clouds or fire. Nature is made from patterns, from snowflakes to spiders webs. Nature must have made patterns because they functioned better than random things. Maybe the Universe is a pattern. I think some people can see beyond the mundane, like Australian aborigines can make connections and patterns that are alien to modern urban man.

{{ Its all repeating patterns, as our wise ancestors put it, "as above, so below." This seems to be very accurate, you can find the same repeating patterns in something as vast a a galaxy and in the shell of a snail or milk stirred in your coffee. Its all repeating top to bottom.

My belief is that if there is such a thing as a God its inexpiicable becuase its the whole of everything. Me you, my cats, the buckie before me the bottle its in, the table it sits on, all of it. in such a view death is not so much an end as like being put back in the soup pot. Life and individuality exists because life is like a single individual bowl of soup taken from the pot, and when we die we go back into the pot to rejoin the whole we came from (in a physical sense this happens in that our bodies rot, break down and all the elements that form them go back into the wider universe), having improved the flavour by the proces of exisiting in the first place. Life enriches the whole pot, but inividuality can only exist when alive and youre in your own soup bowl. Once back in the pot your just a bit of God again, indistinguishable from the rest, just as if you pour a bowl of soup back in the soup pot its impossible to tell what was originally in the bowl.}}

The pattern thing is fascinating, like you said, either a galaxy or a shell, its the same pattern. Ancient peoples recognised this pattern and turned it into body art or decorations on tombs, they probably had a closer concpt about what it meant than we do, us being shut off from the universe in our cozy-safe homes. We shut out the majesty and the terror of the universe, its scary and we prefer to sit on the sofa watching cozy-safe television, but the peoples living in caves and mud huts didnt feel cozy, they had fires to ward off sabre tooth tigers and wolves, they had no concept of safety. We generally dont go to sleep looking at the black infinity of the sky and the blazing stars, they did, and it must have made them shit bricks just trying to imagine what all that awesome stuff meant. But they saw the patterns.

{{ It is fascinating how often these patterns do occur in ancient art and symbols. Its such a shame in almost every case however we have no idea what those people actually thought about those patterns.

Hey Lance hope youve got your camera set up for tomorrows meteor shower. }}

I am gonna try and get out on Friday when I don't have to get up early for work the next day! The Lyrids are only a little shower anyway so not going to be staying up for that one.

Hopefully will find something interesting though!!

Let me know if you can see the videos.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ufos-very-real-60-minutes-061200487.html

{{Working fine for me with no VPN on.
On the subject matter, Im always suspicous. In the 50/60's the US govenrment delibrated promoted and funded those who promoted UFO's so there was an excuse when folk were actually seeing their top secret stuff being tested. }}

Interesting take on it. In that case the fake UFO's would have to be close to what the military is actually capable of, or observers would make the separation between alien and terrestrial capabilities and there would be no cover. I don't think we have those capabilities.

I don't think we have those capabilities. - Halfy

{{Which would be the precise message they are trying to convey to other countries. Theres a whole fascinating history of who the US has funded, particularly in the 60's- lots of UFO groups covertly funded, Uri Gellar being a notable example of someone the US spent tax payer money funding and even actively promoting.
There is a fascinating book, whose title I sadly cannot recall, I read many years ago which looked at the whole UFO thing and Project Blue Book from the angle of 'why did the US government spend all this money, and who and what on?' and the end up was they spent it on a load of various groups claiming everything from alien abductions and UFO's sightings to esp and telekensis. Whats odd about it is in every case they found them to be either untrue, no results or fraudelent. But they kept the money and promotion of them going. Not only that they infiltrated said groups with their own agents whose jobs were to encourage and endorse these UFO ideas. The famous Men in Black, according to this work were military agents sent to throw eye witnesses off the scent by delibratly acting odd and weird to further encourage the persons belief they had seen something not of this world.
It later turned out they were developing early drone, stealth and similar new tech, many sightings of which at the time were of course attributed to UFO's instead. }}

Watched it on YouTube.

Not long now. James West Telescope.

Plays more like an Apple advertisement than a documentary.

Did you take that yourself? Flipping amazing shot.

wow! that amazing.

That's a great shot. Some camera you got there.

Yep, an image of my own.

Well, 25 images of 120 seconds each, stacked together to remove as much "noise" as possible and then processed to bring out the detail that gets lost with everything else going on in the sky.

The central core of the galaxy (and the smaller companion) were a bit over-exposed but I couldn't be bothered to fix that.