A Bruised Universe?

[Nune]

The size and magnitude of our 1 galaxy is impossible for a human brain to logically comprehend. You can tell yourself that you realize how big it is, and read statistics and theories on such, but you mentally can't process it's actual size. And that's just our galaxy, and there are millions of those (that we've found / think). So when I read subjective, observational theories on parallel universes or multiple planes of existence it's kind of laughable. We're so far from any genuine understanding of whats going on out there. You can argue your facts, numbers, theories, YouTube videos..

At one point, the smartest guy on Earth said the Earth was the center of the universe. But he was wrong.. making everyone.. Look Like a BITCH.

[Rhambuk]

Originally Posted by Nune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

At one point, the smartest guy on Earth said the Earth was the center of the universe. But he was wrong.. making everyone.. Look Like a BITCH.

Flat too, be careful you don't sale over the edge and fall into the infinitum of space beneath you...

[Korisek]

Originally Posted by Bardalicious [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nor does that detract from the fact that this is a theory.

"Theory" doesn't actually mean "baseless assumption" in scientific lingo like it does in the public vernacular. "Gravity" is still a theory despite its existence being pretty much universally acknowledged, for instance, primarily because our understanding of it is STILL incomplete.

[Hasbinbad]

Originally Posted by Korisek [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

"Theory" doesn't actually mean "baseless assumption" in scientific lingo like it does in the public vernacular. "Gravity" is still a theory despite its existence being pretty much universally acknowledged, for instance, primarily because our understanding of it is STILL incomplete.

Careful.

Gravity isn't really a thing. It's a side effect of an interaction between fundamental forces.

[Toehammer]

Originally Posted by Nune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

At one point, the smartest guy on Earth said the Earth was the center of the universe. But he was wrong.. making everyone.. Look Like a BITCH.

Just because you said the "smartest guy on Earth" (whatever that even means) believed the center of the universe was the Earth, even if this is "historically accurate", or more importantly verifiable, has no bearing on this argument. Just because someone in the past, with less knowledge of the universe, said something factually false does not have any bearing on the validity of modern day science.

Originally Posted by Nune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The size and magnitude of our 1 galaxy is impossible for a human brain to logically comprehend. You can tell yourself that you realize how big it is, and read statistics and theories on such, but you mentally can't process it's actual size. And that's just our galaxy, and there are millions of those (that we've found / think). So when I read subjective, observational theories on parallel universes or multiple planes of existence it's kind of laughable. We're so far from any genuine understanding of whats going on out there. You can argue your facts, numbers, theories, YouTube videos..

Just because you don't understand something, does not mean you cannot make remarkable predictions about it. In fact, we are in an incredible position right now with physics that is more "incomprehensible than the size of the universe" ... quantum mechanics. We know the fine structure constant (basically a quantification of electromagnetic force) accurate to the 10th decimal place or so. Feynman once amusingly put it as measuring the distance between NY and LA within a human hair width of accuracy (now it is even better).

It took me a long time to realize this about my beloved science: science can never really tell you why, but it can tell you how something happens and to what accuracy, as corroborated by experiment. Nobody knows why the principle of inertia holds true... but it is both logical by nature and corroborated by experiment almost perfectly.

As for the original post on Penrose's theory and idea it is quite interesting. A repeating big bang/big crunch/big bounce (expands then gravitationally collapses then expands (bounces) again) is the traditional cyclic model of the universe. But Penrose proposed something quite different... basically that protons decay (crazy idea in and of itself, have to revert to truly exotic theories to get this to happen) and eventually you just have a universe of radiation. Any bit of radiation is timeless (photons are timeless... i.e. a photon emitted from a star 50 light years away that strikes your eye has been "alive" for zero time, exactly as long as the one coming from your computer screen, if the photon could measure time) so that means that there would be no frame of reference in the universe... so to speak.

However, it is unclear to me how he makes the logical jump that it would initiate a new expansion/big bang. It all hinges on the assumptions of general relativity and metrics he uses. But from what I can understand, it would get around all of this dark energy stuff that cosmologists are zealously pushing these days. It has been a few years since grad school and general relativity, but as a condensed matter/quantum mechanics physicist... requiring proton decay is a shaky assumption that Penrose makes. We have no reason, experimentally or theoretically at this moment, to believe protons ever decay.

So in one sense, I understand why wacky theories are dismissed by you. However, the cool thing about science is that a new test, measurement, or prediction can be made based on theory or to create a new theory. If this Planck spacecraft keeps revealing new startling measurements to 6 sigma significance, as Penrose claims, then you might have to take these wacky ideas more seriously. Almost everything you rely on (car, transistors (computer), electrical power) was developed with much less than 6 sigma significance... and they work almost flawlessly.

tl;dr Just because a theory is nutty and the scale is incomprehensible, doesn't mean you can't make accurate/repeatable scientific predictions about it. The cool thing about science is that it makes the incomprehensible just a tad bit more comprehensible one measurement at a time. Baby steps. Eventually, understanding becomes second nature.

[Hasbinbad]

What I thought more interesting than penrose really was the support for the quantum foam idea that others found in the same evidence.