From: Bill Roh (billroh@churchofvirus.com)
Date: Fri Jan 25 2002 - 13:04:57 MST
Blunderov - In response to your last question - "Could the universe be both
infinite and finite?"
If you had a trillion dollars to spend, the money would for all intents and
purposes be infinite. You would never spend it all. Can you imagine a trillion
of anything?
If you were to have the super-hyper-spin drive and could travel the speed of
light, you would find that you could never travel the whole Universe as by the
time you got anywhere, that which is behind you would have expanded and changed
in a quadrillion different ways.
The problems with the universe are all in our heads!
Bill
Blunderov wrote:
> Re: virus: One for the Croc Hunter on Space. JoeDees. Thu 2002/01/24 07:24
>
> [JoeDees wrote]
> <quote>
> Actually, we have the evidence of the microwave radiation from the Big Bang
> that
> tells us that the universe is between 12 and 14 billion years old. Multiply
> this by
> the maximum expansion quotient of the universe subsequent to the Big Bang
> (the
> speed of light - around 186, 286 mps), and we can not only see that the
> universe
> is finite, but estimate its maximum circumference. The reach of the
> microwave
> radiation, btw, as a part of the universe, is equal to the reach of the
> whole, the
> universe in toto.<quote>
>
> [Blunderov]
> This is very bad news. I cannot grasp that the universe might be finite. I
> have tried to think of it as:the Universe is a set, U, with itself, u, as
> the sole member. This was not a big help. I cannot withstand the idea that
> there <em>must<em> be something on the other side of that boundary. In my
> experience of the world that's what boundaries do - they have one other
> side.
>
> By the data you have cited, the conclusion that "outside" the universe there
> is "nothing" seems unavoidable, but the fact we <i>know<i> that there
> <em>is<em> something,(existence, whatever it's actual nature)seems to
> preclude the possibility of there being "nothing".
>
> I read recently that a logician had proved that (sorry I can't find a
> reference or remember the name off-hand) when dealing with sets that have
> infinity as their characteristic, the law of the excluded middle falls away!
> Something can be both true and not true!
>
> Is there the remotest possibility that this could have something to do with
> the universe?
>
> Could the universe be both infinite and finite?
>
> Blunderov
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