I tend to lean towards Multiverse Theory. A multitude of universes exist and it's possible that the laws that govern them are all different. This would possibly mean only a few (thousand, trillion, however many there are) would even contain matter or generate life. This is obviously beyond our comprehension however, we'll likely never know if there are other universes, but it makes sense that there would be. Why did our universe expand with matter? Because the laws that govern it allowed it to and it happened.

(April 26, 2012 at 6:16 pm)aleialoura Wrote: One of my friends posted this today:

"Why do people think science has any real answers? Today a scientist told me the sun is a star when it's obviously a circle and anyone can see that!"

And they were serious too.

The stupid! It burns!

Almost as stupid (or perhaps just as stupid), a religious member of my family didn't know that all those countless stars in the night sky were other suns. She thought they were just lights.

People. Are. Stupid.

(April 27, 2012 at 7:48 am)Ace Otana Wrote:

(April 26, 2012 at 6:16 pm)aleialoura Wrote: One of my friends posted this today:

"Why do people think science has any real answers? Today a scientist told me the sun is a star when it's obviously a circle and anyone can see that!"

And they were serious too.

The stupid! It burns!

Almost as stupid (or perhaps just as stupid), a religious member of my family didn't know that all those countless stars in the night sky were other suns. She thought they were just lights.

People. Are. Stupid.

Do these people even try to learn about things??

The stupidity is hurting me greatly. Did these people not go to primary school?

(April 27, 2012 at 7:50 am)Zen Badger Wrote: Do these people even try to learn about things??

I would have to say no, but that's just a guess.

Quote:Did these people not go to primary school?

Either their school is to blame for not teaching them or they're just too stupid to understand anything that's being said. You can't fix stupid.

(April 26, 2012 at 4:16 pm)cdabamsworth Wrote: Somebody I know said:

"The universe exists. The universe has a beginning (big bang)

The universe we know, live in and are aware of.

Quote: and an end (freeze).

The guy is an idiot wannabe. The end of the universe is called heat death.

Quote: The idea of it collapsing again is absurd, what would cause that?

If it were going to, gravity would cause it to contract but there will not be a big crunch.

Quote: The universe couldn’t have created itself, as it had to have been in existence first (common sense) in order to have done so. So, something OUTSIDE the universe created the universe.

Common sense isn't common (especially among Christoholics). The universe sure could have began without any outside influence. Just look at a bootstrap program or an autocatalytic reaction - those aren't the best examples but ones we are most familiar with, a better example some of us are familiar with is the way virtual particles begin to exist.

Quote:The universe is all space, time, and matter (theory of relativity). Something outside time created it.

When did he demonstrate that. Does he always make conclusions before they are shown to be true?

Quote: Could be an abstract idea, but have you ever seen a number affect something?

What does this have to do with anything?

Quote: What else is outside the universe? Nothing. So, nothing comes from nothing (common sense). Nothing isn’t the creator. So, it’s a disembodied mind that created it. It is outside time, space, and matter. It’s a disembodied mind because there is no other answer.

This is a Christoholic version of what is called a Boltzmann Brain.

Quote:I can create a sand box, and I am not a sand box. I can still interact with the sandbox while remaining separate from it. In the same way, God interacts with us. I attribute this mind to the Judeo-Christian God.

Again, this conclusion isn't warranted and anyway, if he was born in Iran chances are he would attribute this mind to Allah, if he was born in Norway in the 12th century, he would attribute that mind to Thor, if he was born in China, chances are he would attribute this mind to Buddha, if he were born intelligent, he would attribute this mind to his imagination.

Quote: The logical answer is there, even if you are blinded to it."

Yes it is and he is blinded by science

aleialoura Wrote:It was my baby's daddy's soon-to-be ex wife's mother. She's done a lot for my daughter and is really sweet, but yeah.... not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Understatement of the year.

(April 27, 2012 at 7:55 am)Phil Wrote:

Quote: The idea of it collapsing again is absurd, what would cause that?

If it were going to, gravity would cause it to contract but there will not be a big crunch.

At the centre of most galaxies are supermassive black holes which are slowly but surely consuming their parent galaxies.

If one extrapolates forward far enough(to a time when all suns have finally petered out) then it is easy to foresee that eventually the universe will consist of nothing but these blackholes and gravity.

And when they finally(after trillions of years)coalesce into one vast singularity which will contain the entire material universe, what then?

(April 27, 2012 at 8:31 am)Zen Badger Wrote:

(April 27, 2012 at 7:55 am)Phil Wrote:

Quote: The idea of it collapsing again is absurd, what would cause that?

If it were going to, gravity would cause it to contract but there will not be a big crunch.

At the centre of most galaxies are supermassive black holes which are slowly but surely consuming their parent galaxies.

If one extrapolates forward far enough(to a time when all suns have finally petered out) then it is easy to foresee that eventually the universe will consist of nothing but these blackholes and gravity.

And when they finally(after trillions of years)coalesce into one vast singularity which will contain the entire material universe, what then?

Are you asking what happens when all the black holes merge? If so, if that happens to black holes that haven't evaporated through Hawking Radiation, they will evaporate through Hawking Radiation. By the way, this isn't even on the scale of trillion cubed years.

---

Zen,

There isn't much of a question that all matter eventually will find itself in black holes but why would two black holes (using this as an example) that are widely separated by say 1035 light years in a three dimensional space necessarily meet one another before the length of time it takes Hawking Radiation to evaporate them? Look at it this way, you have two atoms of Hydrogen in an otherwise "perfect" vacuum. How easy do you think it is for them to miss one another in a three dimensional container? I'll let you work out the math but the probability of them meeting is somewhere in a container say 10 light years on a side is so phenomenally large for all intents and purposes you can say it will never happen.

Evaporation is really only an issue for small black holes.

A black hole with the mass of the sun would take about 2.098 × 1067 years to evaporate so how long would it take it take if it has the mass of the universe?