• Log in with Facebook Log in with Twitter Log In with Google      Sign In    
  • Create Account
  LongeCity
              Advocacy & Research for Unlimited Lifespans


Adverts help to support the work of this non-profit organisation. To go ad-free join as a Member.


Photo

"Universe waking up" and the age of the universe


  • Please log in to reply
7 replies to this topic

#1 Nimbus

  • Guest
  • 23 posts
  • 0

Posted 06 July 2008 - 01:25 AM


Hello,

What are the odds of the singularity being a correct prediction, and of no other intelligent life in the whole universe having had one of their own yet? Is a sufficiently low number of other intelligences (that didn't die like Drake's equation predicts) in addition to an unsurpassable speed of light enough to explain their singularity(ies) not having reached us yet?  Or are we just not sensible to it? It's a huge universe, and a very long time, as far as a Singularity requires, for not a single wave of waking universe to have reached our shore, isn't it?  

#2 Nimbus

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 23 posts
  • 0

Posted 23 April 2011 - 07:56 AM

http://singularityhu...-of-qa-session/
Someone actually asked him my question, more or less... Kurzweil considers it part of the Fermi paradox.

sponsored ad

  • Advert

#3 Forever21

  • Guest
  • 1,918 posts
  • 122

Posted 26 April 2011 - 02:05 AM

What is there are the whole universe we are in is just one big cluster (a universe) and there are billions others like it out there, outside our universe and that maybe, just maybe we are just the only life in this universe but there are billions of universes that probably have life. Makes our whole SETI project kind of sad eh?

Edited by Forever21, 26 April 2011 - 02:06 AM.


#4 Forever21

  • Guest
  • 1,918 posts
  • 122

Posted 26 April 2011 - 03:39 AM

Let me try that again...


Michiu Kaku has a "design" of interstellar/intergalactic vehicle fueled by anti-matter. That's us, humans coming up with such design. Imagine more intelligent beings out there capable of something more complex engineering. We would be visited, contacted or we would see their galactic traces or footprints. But we don't. Maybe we're all alone in the universe.


But what IF the whole universe we are in is just ONE universe in an ocean of universes? And that maybe life exist, not in our universe, but in other universes?

Posted Image

One dot in this picture is an entire Universe with its own clusters of galaxies & star systems.




Idea from: Stephen Hawking's Story of Everything

Edited by Forever21, 26 April 2011 - 03:49 AM.


#5 Guest

  • Guest
  • 320 posts
  • 214

Posted 04 May 2011 - 08:20 PM

Let me try that again...

Michiu Kaku has a "design" of interstellar/intergalactic vehicle fueled by anti-matter. That's us, humans coming up with such design. Imagine more intelligent beings out there capable of something more complex engineering. We would be visited, contacted or we would see their galactic traces or footprints. But we don't. Maybe we're all alone in the universe.



As of our current understanding of physics there is not really any indication, that FTL-travel is possible. If this is true - which is the best working hypothesis at the moment - there is no Expansive-Singularity-Fermi-Paradoxon. It takes many, many millions and billions of years to get from other galaxies to ours, so they likely just had not the time to visit us *if* they decided to do it. And at a certain distance from us the galactic expansion will prevent any lightspeed limited civilization to ever reach us.

@All: please do not just make up scenarios where FTL-travel is "naturally" common place. Relatively is a virtually proven theory and *every* new and advanced theory has to include special relativity the same way that general relativity includes all the "proven" observations of newtons gravity. Wormholes are currently science fiction with no real evidence that they are possible. Even those theories predicting their reality conclude that crazy amounts of energy and especially non existing types of exotic matter are required. Even in those cases stuff made of normal matter is not able to pass it.

Edited by TFC, 04 May 2011 - 08:25 PM.


#6 solbanger

  • Guest
  • 215 posts
  • 11

Posted 06 May 2011 - 04:23 PM

Let me try that again...

Michiu Kaku has a "design" of interstellar/intergalactic vehicle fueled by anti-matter. That's us, humans coming up with such design. Imagine more intelligent beings out there capable of something more complex engineering. We would be visited, contacted or we would see their galactic traces or footprints. But we don't. Maybe we're all alone in the universe.



As of our current understanding of physics there is not really any indication, that FTL-travel is possible. If this is true - which is the best working hypothesis at the moment - there is no Expansive-Singularity-Fermi-Paradoxon. It takes many, many millions and billions of years to get from other galaxies to ours, so they likely just had not the time to visit us *if* they decided to do it. And at a certain distance from us the galactic expansion will prevent any lightspeed limited civilization to ever reach us.

@All: please do not just make up scenarios where FTL-travel is "naturally" common place. Relatively is a virtually proven theory and *every* new and advanced theory has to include special relativity the same way that general relativity includes all the "proven" observations of newtons gravity. Wormholes are currently science fiction with no real evidence that they are possible. Even those theories predicting their reality conclude that crazy amounts of energy and especially non existing types of exotic matter are required. Even in those cases stuff made of normal matter is not able to pass it.


TFC: That may be true, but that science is based on our rudimentary understanding of matter in our universe. Relativity is an excellent explanation for the motion of large objects, however, we do know that its rules breakdown at quantum levels. Action at a distance is possible within quantum theory, which predicts that information can travel faster than light as well as out of temporal sequence (i.e. a future event affecting a result in the present.) Attempting to navigate the universe by shifting galaxies around may not be the most pragmatic approach to interstellar travel. With quantum mechanics you can conceivably access pre-established connections between all points in the universe and instead of physically transporting a human observer, you simply manifest the observer into a new environment, thus leapfrogging the supposed lightspeed restriction.

This fundamental manipulation of matter may bring us the dream of replicators able to construct objects on the fly, access fleeting moments in the timeline and alter our bodies like changing a TV channel. This technology may not leave a "trail" of any sort. In fact a user may not even need to leave his or her bedroom to explore Zeta Reticulii! So expecting an alien civilization to leave footprints according to our clunky baseline might be a tad bit naive.

Additionally Forever 21 makes a good point. We do not know how many universes rose and fell before ours or how many co-exist with ours at this moment in time. Within all of this potential an alien civilization might have developed a way to escape their universe and enter others, maybe even by breaking the lightspeed barrier. All it takes is one to set a precedent. Whether or not they would want to share this tech is another matter.

#7 Guest

  • Guest
  • 320 posts
  • 214

Posted 07 May 2011 - 12:48 AM

TFC: That may be true, but that science is based on our rudimentary understanding of matter in our universe. Relativity is an excellent explanation for the motion of large objects, however, we do know that its rules breakdown at quantum levels. Action at a distance is possible within quantum theory, which predicts that information can travel faster than light as well as out of temporal sequence (i.e. a future event affecting a result in the present.) Attempting to navigate the universe by shifting galaxies around may not be the most pragmatic approach to interstellar travel. With quantum mechanics you can conceivably access pre-established connections between all points in the universe and instead of physically transporting a human observer, you simply manifest the observer into a new environment, thus leapfrogging the supposed lightspeed restriction.

This fundamental manipulation of matter may bring us the dream of replicators able to construct objects on the fly, access fleeting moments in the timeline and alter our bodies like changing a TV channel. This technology may not leave a "trail" of any sort. In fact a user may not even need to leave his or her bedroom to explore Zeta Reticulii! So expecting an alien civilization to leave footprints according to our clunky baseline might be a tad bit naive.

Additionally Forever 21 makes a good point. We do not know how many universes rose and fell before ours or how many co-exist with ours at this moment in time. Within all of this potential an alien civilization might have developed a way to escape their universe and enter others, maybe even by breaking the lightspeed barrier. All it takes is one to set a precedent. Whether or not they would want to share this tech is another matter.


Whoho... our understanding of the universe is of course clearly not perfect but I would not exactly call it rudimentary. True we do not have a complete unified theory of relativity+quantum theory, but some aspects hold even here. Quantum tunneling is the only process I can think of that truely allows travel of particles "faster than light" (the term is not really applicable in this context, though). You are reffering appearently to quantum entanglement, but under no circumstance information can be transmitted/exctracted using this phenomenon (the wikipedia article should explain this).

I never heard about the future affecting the present or from its perspective the past - could you be more specific about this? And what pre established connections are you talking about? Leapfrogging light speed? Are you still talking about quantum entanglement? Those things are proven to be impossible within those frames. This is true even in a thought experiment maintaining a quantum entanglement while transporting the particles to the other side of the galaxy - and due to rapid decoherence wrt to the entangeld particles (another fundamental phenomenon of quantum mechanics) not even this is possible.

Star Trek quantum replicators are simple BS simply due to Heisenberg uncertainty. Apart from virtual reality simulations you will have to leave earth, doing long journeys taking thousands, millions, and billions of years or an unreachable amount of time - depending on the destination choosen.

Maybe there are other universes with other laws of physics. But this still does not enable anyone to break lightspeed in ours. Therefore, as far as can be told from the physics at hand, mankind is limited to our corner of the galaxy for any forseeable future - say the next 7000 years assuming that we invent near lightspeed drives any time soon. Otherwise it can take much longer.

sponsored ad

  • Advert

#8 Marios Kyriazis

  • Guest
  • 466 posts
  • 255
  • Location:London UK

Posted 07 May 2011 - 08:52 AM

Whilst on this subject, you may want to read the following (highly speculative but informative) paper:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.4362




0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users