Life is at the center of everything

[Angrboda]

If you're going to choose the beginning of the life cycle of a human as a data point, it only makes sense to choose the beginning of the life cycle of the universe as the other data point. It's called being consistent. Instead, you choose an arbitrary time during the life of the universe, and an arbitrary time during the life of a human, and an arbitrary scale to measure it on. Therefore, your result is simply arbitrary; it means nothing because you've chosen the values without rhyme or reason.

A logarithmic scale is the scale of choice by the scientific community when comparing a broad spectrum of sizes. I wouldn't call it an arbitrary choice as you suggest. Default choice of the scientific community would be more appropriate.

Logarithms were introduced by John Napier in the early 17th century as a means to simplify calculations.

Prior to the seventeenth century, linear scales were used for everything, from weights, to scales on maps. Linear scales are still the most common.

If you would like to use the "beginning of the life cycle of the universe" as one end of your scale instead of the planck length you will need to invent a new physics which has more explanatory power than general relativity and quantum mechanics. The planck length is as close to the "beginning of the life cycle of the universe" as we can currently get.

I don't need to know the exact size to know that it is much smaller than a human egg and thus if it is used, the human egg is no longer at the center of the universe.

The only way it works if you arbitrarily choose a logarithmic scale, choose the beginning of a human life, the middle of the life of the universe, and for no particular reason, the planck length.

If current physics is correct, then the universe will keep expanding, which means the human egg is only at the center of a logarithmic scale of sizes for a specific, arbitrarily chosen, period in the life cycle of the universe. Since it's a purely arbitrarily chosen time period, the meaning assigned is purely arbitrary.

Even if we accepted that being in the center in terms of size meant something in terms of being in the center of the universe in terms of meaning, which we have no reason to suppose, your comparison doesn't work.

[Faith No More]

My personal opinion is that there is nothing significant or special about being in the center cosmologically speaking. However some people do hold that place to be special. It's a subjective thing.

Then why bring it up?

If you argue that being at the center holds no significance, I don't have a beef with you. If you argue that life isn't at the center cosmologically speaking, I do have a beef with you.

The planck length and the observable universe, in my opinion, make the most sense for boundaries of a cosmological scale. Life falls right in the center of that scale.

As rasetsu has pointed out, you're arbitrarily choosing endpoints. Then you're attempting to justify that by pointing out they are the endpoints of our current understanding. You're making the assumption that these endpoints hold any sort of significance, which is especially unjustified due to our inability to observe things on such vastly different scales from ourselves.

[Angrboda]

The size of the Universe is unknown; it may be infinite.

"Oops."

The region visible from Earth (the observable universe) is a sphere with a radius of about 46 billion light years, based on where the expansion of space has taken the most distant objects observed.

46 billion light-years=4.35184307 × 10^26 meters
Planck length=1.616199(97)×10^−35 meters

26 - (( 26+35 ) / 2 ) = midpoint = -4.5
10^-4.5 = 3.16x10^-5 = 0.316x10^-4
Human embryo during week one=1.0x10^-4 - 1.5x10^-4 (University of New South Wales, Embryology)

Human embryo is three to five times larger than the midpoint between the Planck length and the size of the observable universe during its first week of development.

QED.

[Heywood]

My personal opinion is that there is nothing significant or special about being in the center cosmologically speaking. However some people do hold that place to be special. It's a subjective thing.

Then why bring it up?

If you argue that being at the center holds no significance, I don't have a beef with you. If you argue that life isn't at the center cosmologically speaking, I do have a beef with you.

The planck length and the observable universe, in my opinion, make the most sense for boundaries of a cosmological scale. Life falls right in the center of that scale.

As rasetsu has pointed out, you're arbitrarily choosing endpoints. Then you're attempting to justify that by pointing out they are the endpoints of our current understanding. You're making the assumption that these endpoints hold any sort of significance, which is especially unjustified due to our inability to observe things on such vastly different scales from ourselves.

Being critical of the end points is a pretty weak counter argument. Its not like they were chosen specifically so life would end up in the center.

The end points do have significance in that we can't observe smaller than the planck length and we can't observe beyond the boundary of the observable universe. The are not arbitrary end points by any means.

All observations in cosmology take place between those two end points.

---

The size of the Universe is unknown; it may be infinite.

"Oops."

The region visible from Earth (the observable universe) is a sphere with a radius of about 46 billion light years, based on where the expansion of space has taken the most distant objects observed.

46 billion light-years=4.35184307 × 10^26 meters
Planck length=1.616199(97)×10^−35 meters

26 - (( 26+35 ) / 2 ) = midpoint = -4.5
10^-4.5 = 3.16x10^-5 = 0.316x10^-4
Human embryo during week one=1.0x10^-4 - 1.5x10^-4 (University of New South Wales, Embryology)

Human embryo is three to five times larger than the midpoint between the Planck length and the size of the observable universe during its first week of development.

QED.

The amount of imprecision here is so inconsequential that to use this as counter argument is the height of nit picking.

Anyways, if you read thru this thread, I have always maintained that life falls in the center....not specifically human life. Early in this thread I mentioned extra terrestrial life as well.

[Angrboda]

The end points do have significance in that we can't observe smaller than the planck length and we can't observe beyond the boundary of the observable universe.

If you go to 10^-16 in the app, you'll note a range given with the label "lengths shorter than this are not confirmed".

What that means is nobody has observed anything smaller than that. Which means the end points of the observable universe are +26 orders of magnitude, and -16 orders of magnitude. The midpoint of the observable universe is then 10^5 meters, or on the order of the distance light travels in a second. This is nowhere near human scales.

So, once again, you are wrong.

[Heywood]

The end points do have significance in that we can't observe smaller than the planck length and we can't observe beyond the boundary of the observable universe.

If you go to 10^-16 in the app, you'll note a range given with the label "lengths shorter than this are not confirmed".

What that means is nobody has observed anything smaller than that. Which means the end points of the observable universe are +26 orders of magnitude, and -16 orders of magnitude. The midpoint of the observable universe is then 10^5 meters, or on the order of the distance light travels in a second. This is nowhere near human scales.

So, once again, you are wrong.

Its physically impossible to observe smaller than the planck length or larger than the observable universe. What about this do you not understand? The fact that we haven't observed something that we can in principle observe with the right technology is an impotent criticism.

You're grasping at straws.

Faithnomore's "so what" argument is better.

[Bucky Ball]

Just more proof that Blowjob has no clue what he's even talking about. Einstein proved in Relativity there is no absolute reference point in space time. That's what "Relativity" means. His saying that anything anywhere is absolutely in one position with respect to another is just more proof he has no actual background in science, and NEEDS to make it look like he can play with the big kids. He can't even keep up with the infants.

[KichigaiNeko]

pout

And here I was thinking that stars where the centre of EVERYTHING!

[Alex K]

Just more proof that Blowjob has no clue what he's even talking about. Einstein proved in Relativity there is no absolute reference point in space time. That's what "Relativity" means. His saying that anything anywhere is absolutely in one position with respect to another is just more proof he has no actual background in science, and NEEDS to make it look like he can play with the big kids. He can't even keep up with the infants.

It's you who seems to have a misunderstanding here, Bubby Balls. We are not talking about relative positions in spacetime, we are talking about scaling laws. So unless you want to argue that the world is exactly conformally symmetric on top of Einsteinian relativity, scales are not relative. Also, you seem to misunderstand special relativity. While absolute positions are not defined, relative positions are. They may be dependent on the frame of reference, but there is a well defined rest frame where distance can be specified uniquely for two objects at rest relative to each other. In a cosmological context, even an absolute local rest frame (albeit not absolute positions) can be defined by the vanishing CMB dipole, something that is not captured by relativity alone.