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Lirdon t1_jc0beew wrote

>the universe is not meant to be understood

This kind of thinking would have us, as a species stagnate, peaking at 16th century technology. Beforehand people believed that the universe is fundamentally unknowable, and that the body is regulated only by four humors. Nothing would be learned if we thought it doesn’t matter, because it isn’t meant to be understood.

The fact is, whether we will understand all of it or not, we benefit greatly trying to figure it out. You may not appreciate it, but every technology the modern world has, is because someone tried to figure it out. Because they were curious and he observed and experimented. It was an astrologist that discovered magnetic resonance that now is the basis of how MRI works. Curiosity makes us all better, even if you don’t see the immediate benefit of it.

We have theories about the universe because we go to the length of actually observing it as much as we can. Looking at the data, we can see things happen and we try to figure out how it works. The Big Bang theory is the best explanation we have now to what we see in our observations and how we understand the physics involved. It didn’t pop out of nowhere, it is culmination of hundreds of years of observation, calculation, testing. We don’t ‘believe’ in it because we were told to. Is it perfect? No. It actually has some holes in it, but scientists see these holes and they get excited, because these are opportunities for study and discovery, rather than blocks in their way.

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GhostCallOut2 OP t1_jc0hm2t wrote

You are right, and I am sorry for the last bit I said. There is just something about the theory that doesn't make sense to me. While there is a lot of research that went into it, for some reason, it just doesn't seem like the answer to me. It keeps me up every night thinking about it, and the truth is I feel as if im going crazy thinking about it all. The universe just makes no sense at all, and that is both beautiful and terrifying. I am no scientists or anything, I am just a man who thinks way too much. It's just what if it has always existed? There is no end to it because it's just infinite

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Lirdon t1_jc1mfhj wrote

I would actually look inwards about this. Anything that happens in the universe on a galactic scale is a process that takes many many many years. It rarely, if at all, has any consequence on a human being.

Why then does it bother you either way? 13.8 billion years, or trillions of years, a life of a human, even humanity in general, is less than a tick of a second in relation either way. We saw almost nothing with our own eyes, and we, as humanity are likely be long gone, before even the life of our own star ends.

None of this will ever have any bearing on your life, or the life of anyone that may live today.

What about it fills you with existential dread enough to keep you up at night?

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GhostCallOut2 OP t1_jcdpiq4 wrote

It is not existential dread, I'm just really into space. It fascinates me, but it is also so terrifyingly big. It would just explain why we can't find life much of anywhere, because not only would life be far apart but also different periods of time. The universe just doesn't make any sense, but that's what is so fascinating about it and beautiful.

That's honestly why there have been thousands of religions because some things just don't make sense at all. We just keep thinking everything has to come from somewhere, but what if that isn't the case? Of course, it would change everything we thought we knew but would open up the door to so much information that could advance our knowledge about space.

The fear I have is the thought that everything we know is wrong. Like I said, I'm no scientist, so I have no way to prove this theory, but the truth is I don't really know how we could prove anything. I do know that once we have a full understanding of how the universe works, human civilization would change.

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Lirdon t1_jcfmu5h wrote

Let me introduce you to the scientific method. At the very basic level, it has only four steps: Observation —> Hypothesis —> Prediction —> Experiment.

This is an ever ongoing process. You observe nature, form a hypothesis based on that hypothesis you make a prediction on what would happen if the conditions were X, and then you test then you observe the result of the test and either validate or adjust your hypothesis then make a prediction and test it again, so on and so forth.

If you look at modern cosmology, you will see this thread of observation, hypothesis, prediction, experimenting leading it throughout history. It is ever evolving.

Now, for the sake of argument and start with your hypothesis — “the universe is ever lasting, perpetual and non-changing.” Now lets make a prediction based on it — what would the universe look like, how it would behave if that would be true?

Let’s start close by — our sun. If your hypothesis is correct the sun shouldn’t exist. Let me explain why — the sun is fueled by a fusion reaction. Two hydrogen atoms are being squeezed together so hard that they combine to make helium and as they do a lot of energy is being released. Some of that energy escapes as light and heat and reaches us.

But that presents your hypothesis with a hurdle. The fusion reaction itself is finite. Because the mass of the sun itself is the limit. Eventually all that hydrogen will be converted to helium and the reaction as we see today would stop. We can actually calculate it. I won’t get into much detail but its basically taking the mass if the sun, then dividing it by the mass of hydrogen being converted to helium via fusion at a given amount of time. This in itself violates the principal of your observation — the universe is never changing, therefore the reaction cannot be finite. So for your observation to be true the sun must therefore be powered through a different process. It needs to shine somehow, right?

But that means that our understanding of nuclear fusion must be wrong — because if we put the mass of the sun in hydrogen in a place the size of the sun it must start fusion. Because it will create the temperatures and pressures needed for fusion. That also means that all of our lab experiments where we recreate this process are also wrong.

But more than that — that means that our understanding of matter is wrong —> our understanding of chemistry is wrong —> our understanding of basic biological processes is wrong and so on and so forth.

So to fit your hypothesis most of our understanding of nature must be wrong. Most of the observation and hypothesis and predictions that were successfully validated with experiments done since the 17th century must be wrong.

Believe me, scientists constantly try to pole holes in our understanding of reality, they look at every constant, every factor and try to see if it can be explained otherwise. You think that your hypothesis is so unique? No, it isn’t up until maybe late 19th century it was the working hypothesis. There was no reason to believe anything else.

But with science done ever since, we’ve grown to understand how many elements in so many scientific disciplines interact. And the most exciting thing is — we still got a ways to go.

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GhostCallOut2 OP t1_jcuwtkk wrote

What if the universe is in a constant loop of creation and destruction? Let's say the big bang is correct, but if the universe expands and then comes back together, forming the ball of energy as the big bang states?

Thank you for that information, too. I hope to one day understand the universe in some sort of way. But what if there were millions of universes before ours? It's a constant loop of it being created. It wouldn't disprove anything we have since the Big Bang still happened, but it would change a lot about what we think about the universe.

This hypothesis would make much more since then the universe just always existing, basing it off of everything we know that is. I do still believe that the Big Bang isn't the answer, but I do believe it is a start of understanding it.

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Lirdon t1_jcxecjc wrote

that was part of the idea the big crunch. The thing is once the Big Bang was theorised, people tried to figure it out. The Big Crunch stipulates that eventually gravity of all the material in the universe will pull everything together and basically return everything to the conditions right before the big bang, ending the universe in a crunch.

So, let's try and make a predictions out of this hypothesis, how would it work? and what would we expect to see in the universe that would affirm it?

Well, the idea is that the moment the Big Bang happens, everything is thrown in all directions and begins to slow down, much like with a rock that you throw, the moment a propelant is spent it slows down, because there's something that resists it – i.e. gravity. So, what we should be seeing is that galaxies away from us should be slowing down, or starting to even reverse their direction of travel (but that would be typical of a much older universe). And that's exactly what scientists were looking for.

But guess what they found? The universe isn't slowing down, it's actually accelerating. I'm talking that since that first observation, about fourty years of further observations confirm the same findings. There are areas of uncertainty there, but the evidence that the universe does not slow down is rather consistent.

But to your other point, we are still trying to figure out reality. How big is the universe really? how is it shaped – i.e. is it flat or is it curving (our current observations say it's flat), so on and so forth, and there are more and more scientists that stipulate that there are more universes out there that we can't see or interact with, at least not yet. I think they didn't make any workable prediction that one can measure and draw any conclusions from, but you're not alone in this. Still, our understanding of the universe is incomplete, and is evolving. It's just based on theories that correlated with observation and science.

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