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Forget Flat Earth Theory, now we have Flat Universe Theory!
#15
RE: Forget Flat Earth Theory, now we have Flat Universe Theory!
(November 25, 2010 at 4:32 pm)theVOID Wrote: Neither is a Circle in that respect. PI breaks down at plank length. Though the boundary is still infinitely traversable even though it's finite in space and volume.
So is walking in place in a circle. You can keep going forever, but the space you're transversing is still finite.

(November 25, 2010 at 4:32 pm)theVOID Wrote: That sounds like a positive claim to me. I'm not in any sense prepared to rule out the possibility of an infinite space with finite regions, not aver reading Alexander Vilenkin's work. They seem mysterious, but when you have a feedback loop and vacuum energy there quite literally appears to be an infinite number of finite sets (potential configurations).
Neither am I of the possibility of infinate space with finite regions - I just don't think it's likely. As I'm trying to convey from my initial post is that I'm trying to cite this as my own conclusions based on what is essentially incomplete evidence.
I think that that is where the evidence we have leads, but we really can't say anything about what's beyond our 13.7 billion light-year radius vision of the universe and some of the mathmatical models based on the physics that we understand of the universe.
I personally don't like the idea that anything is infinate because most of the people I've read about who do the science behind the kind of universe in which we live on that scale, adding infinities in any sense seems to have always been problematic because it creates a systematic problem in which every connecting portion of reality to that infinity must also be infinate.
Still, the universe could always be much wierder and do things no one could have imagined before, so who knows, really?

(November 25, 2010 at 4:32 pm)theVOID Wrote: That's a false analogy, just because x is finite in space does not mean that it is finitely traversable.
I wasn't posing an arguement that the universe wasn't infinately transversable.
You can infinately transverse just about anything if you have infinate time and space to move.

(November 25, 2010 at 4:32 pm)theVOID Wrote: A curved universe would be the same, you look far enough in one direction and you see the back of your head, even though this universe would be spatially finite.
Indeed - but the universe is either not curved or it's not curved enough to be detectable with current methods. To my knowledge, an experiment was done in an attempt to see if this was the case by shooting two probes in different directions and seeing if the total number of degrees between them was equal to or greater than 180 degrees.
If equal, then the universe is flat but if greater, then the universe is curved. The experiment proved the former. Alternatively, it might also be a situation where the universe is so huge that the curve escapes detection even by our high precision lasers, but the evidence that we have points to it being flat.

(November 25, 2010 at 4:46 pm)orogenicman Wrote: This is true. However, the surface of a sphere is unbounded in that if you could walk on that surface, you could walk essentially forever and not find a beginning or end. Similarly, I've heard the universe described as finite but unbounded. That's my two cents' worth.
Right. What I'm arguing against is that the universe is infinate in the sense that you can keep going in one direction forever and never reach your previous position if the space you transverse is always flat and never curves back on itself - such as if the universe were spherical in its dimensions like the earth is spherical.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925

Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
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Messages In This Thread
RE: Forget Flat Earth Theory, now we have Flat Universe Theory! - by TheDarkestOfAngels - November 25, 2010 at 5:33 pm

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