What if the galaxy or the universe is an entity and we're just so small that it doesn't know where here?
I mean, could something be so big that we don't know it's there? Ants probably don't know we exist but for some inexplicable reason, their mounds on sidewalks get destroyed and there's plenty of food around left over by us. Maybe there's something out there that's so big that we're unaware of its existence and they are either unaware of our existence or maybe they are but they think we're like insects or bacteria - not that interesting and best to be left alone?
Maybe the time scale for them is such that if they did decide to wipe us out, it would take billions of years by our scale but only a second or two by their time scale. Size and time are relative. The bigger you are, the slower will time pass for you but that would be your norm. The smaller you are, the faster will time go for you.
Know what got me thinking of this? the band name "They Might be Giants". I was thinking about the name, "They might be giants? Surely they would know if there are giants about...but what if they were so big, they couldn't be seen?"
Joined: 22 Mar 2008 Age: 35 Gender: Male Posts: 1,152
13 Apr 2008, 9:28 pm
digger1 wrote:
I've been thinking about this a lot.
What if the galaxy or the universe is an entity and we're just so small that it doesn't know where here?
I mean, could something be so big that we don't know it's there? Ants probably don't know we exist but for some inexplicable reason, their mounds on sidewalks get destroyed and there's plenty of food around left over by us. Maybe there's something out there that's so big that we're unaware of its existence and they are either unaware of our existence or maybe they are but they think we're like insects or bacteria - not that interesting and best to be left alone?
Maybe the time scale for them is such that if they did decide to wipe us out, it would take billions of years by our scale but only a second or two by their time scale. Size and time are relative. The bigger you are, the slower will time pass for you but that would be your norm. The smaller you are, the faster will time go for you.
Know what got me thinking of this? the band name "They Might be Giants". I was thinking about the name, "They might be giants? Surely they would know if there are giants about...but what if they were so big, they couldn't be seen?"
you have a good point, but that kind of argument is really unfalsifiable. If they cannot be seen, but can stil lexist how can I prove the exist. It is interesting to htink about the posssibiliteis though
Here's another thing: What defines a year? The earth's orbit around the sun, right? So a light year is the distance something traveling at the speed of light would traverse in one year. What if a planet's year is less than 365.4 days? What if their day is longer or shorter?
If you were that big (as big as the theoretical giants), the distance would be less for them as it would be for us - so a swipe of their hand could theoretically travel at the speed of light or even faster by our observation. If you were the size of a galaxy and swiped your hand through the galaxy, it wouldn't take long at all - traveling a many thousands of times the speed of light by our perspective.
So, in my opinion, the speed of light can be obtained and greatly surpassed depending on how big something is.
Bacteria don't know we're here yet we know they exist. The bacteria don't have brains so they aren't aware of our existence. Mosquitoes are only vaguely aware of our existence being that they feed on our blood but they don't know what they're feeding from only that it's warm, emits CO2 and sustains their young.
If you were that big (as big as the theoretical giants), the distance would be less for them as it would be for us - so a swipe of their hand could theoretically travel at the speed of light or even faster by our observation.
Er, no they couldn't. If they were that big their perception of time would be slower, so a swipe of their hand would cover a great distance, but would take a very long time to do so. The speed of light is one of the constants of the universe as we know it. It can't be directly exceeded by any known means.
So a signal in the brain or along the arm of one of these giants couldn't exceed the speed of light either. That's why they would perceive time more slowly.
The speed of light is one of the constants of the universe as we know it. It can't be directly exceeded by any known means.
So, basically, what you're saying is that nothing at all, neither atoms or any type of organism, can travel faster than the speed of light?
Essentially, from reading your statement on this website, I suspect that you are trying to convey the popular opinion that nothing can travel faster in this universe than the light?
Joined: 12 Oct 2006 Age: 38 Gender: Male Posts: 2,475 Location: Moorhead, Minnesota, USA
14 Apr 2008, 7:23 am
A good way of describing the speed of light is to imagine a graph with spatial velocity on one axis and time on the other axis, time is just another dimension and one can think of (though this is not really scientifically accurate but it is a good way of thinking of it) this as that at rest (relative to another object, of course) one is traveling through time "at the speed of light". The faster you go in terms of spatial velocity the slower you will go through the time dimension. At the speed of light there is no movement in time, time stops. Only massless objects can move at the speed of light (indeed, massless objects MUST move at the speed of light), this is because they do not interact with the Higgs Field and it's associated Higgs particle and thus do not experience inertia (which is why they are massless)
Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Age: 40 Gender: Male Posts: 1,105 Location: X
15 Apr 2008, 1:31 pm
I agree. I am pantheist. I believe that the universe and all existence is really a grand consciousness that everything makes up. I believe that the solar system is a type of atom and vice versa. In a sense we are very small compared to the infiniteness that we make up, but we are very large compared to the infiniteness that we are made up of.
Joined: 21 Jun 2007 Age: 31 Gender: Male Posts: 207
15 Apr 2008, 2:00 pm
The universe is finite, but one can never reach the end of it unless they go faster than light. If they hypothetically were to go faster than light and reach the end of the universe, they would be in a vat of nothoingness.