Recent comments in /f/space

OkSmile t1_j4eksgi wrote

Reply to The multiverse by Manureofhistory

I remember David Deutsch making an appearance argument that stuck with me. He said that if you could in fact perform a quantum calculation on a real physical device (this was before we had any sort of quantum computers), then the multiple states of each quantum "bit" must in fact be stored in some "real" physical space. With this premise, the multiverse was actually the simplest "Occam's razor" explanation for how this information is stored.

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f_d t1_j4egd0c wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in The multiverse by Manureofhistory

>For something to happen the same way an infinite number of times in itself is the most improbable of actions .

You are assuming the universe is not already set up so that everything repeats perfectly. There's nothing improbable about a predestined outcome.

>We do know a lot of galaxies are being sucked to a certain spot in the universe right now called the great attractor and we don’t know why.

All you need is gravity. It's on the other side of our galaxy, so we just can't get a good look at it.

>The problem with the heat death theory is we don’t have enough information to say that is even probable it is just a theory like everything else.

We know what happens to space and energy over time in this universe. We can predict what will happen far into the future based on this. It isn't guaranteed to happen, but it is by far the most likely outcome if nothing drastically changes about what is currently understood. Things like being a simulation that is suddenly turned off are so far outside our normal experience that there is no point trying to assign probability to them. We can predict based on the things we can experience, not outside intervention.

>We see a little picture and extrapolate a big picture and even though that is one of the most popular theory’s it is still as likely as we get to a certain point and it all sucks back and restarts.

You can't make useful predictions about likelihood based on that kind of supposition. You only can make useful predictions about likelihood if you begin from the currently understood behavior of the universe and build from there. And you certainly can't say that on the one hand, heat death is equally likely because anything can happen with equal probability, but on the other hand, an infinitely repeating universe is less likely than everything else. Either we stick to things we can actually predict with different amounts of likelihood based on current observations, or we make up whatever we want and call any of our made-up scenarios as likely as anything else.

An infinitely repeating sequence of events is completely possible as long as everything is lined up the right way at the start. And if there is somehow any kind of eternal repetition of the birth and death of the universe, an infinitely repeating cycle of events would be much more stable and likely to repeat itself than a different sequence each time. Existing in such a cycle would make the likelihood of that cycle existing one hundred percent, no matter how easy or hard it is to create the cycle in the first place.

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jawshoeaw t1_j4efrmy wrote

Reply to Moon tilt illusion? by ThatFlashCat

It’s because we look at a 3D world with 2D retinas and our brains do a lot of processing to try and make everything look straight and rectangular. Which is nice if you are living in a box. But when there are no straight lines for reference, your brain can’t make sense of it. That nice “straight” horizon you’re looking at is actually a circle which stretches behind you. Your poor brain is trying to process this raw data projected onto our retina (which btw is also a portion of a sphere ) . The whole thing is a mind fck tbh. It forces you to accept that in many ways the “reality” we perceive isn’t real. I hesitate to even call this an optical illusion…we are experiencing a constant illusion and when we look up and see curved lines in space connecting the moon’s terminator with the sun we think something is broken.

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PapaSnork t1_j4efenn wrote

Reply to comment by probenation in The multiverse by Manureofhistory

While the human mind loves elegance and patterns, if there were more about the universe that qualified as truly scale-invariant, then something like what you propose would be closer to possible; however, consider that even a snippet of recorded speech is only intelligible within a very small range of all possible playback speeds... anything too slow or too fast is unintelligible, and outside of 20 Hz-20 kHz, inaudible to humans. Let's propose for a moment that the Gaia hypothesis is literally true; notwithstanding the difficulty in bridging the experiential gap between forms of sentience, the sheer difference in timescales would preclude true communication. I could try to talk to the mitochondria in my cells, or the literal planet I'm on- but, either way, nothing will happen.

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SSgtPieGuy t1_j4e9qhk wrote

Reply to Fear of space/bright stars.. by throwawaymanop

To ease your worries, there are entire teams dedicated to the observation of asteroids and their potential risk to our planet. Plus the testing of planetary defense systems has had notable results, even if it was just a test against a non-threatening object. In terms of stars and other interstellar objects... The threat to our planet is, at worst, extremely miminal. Most supernovae candidates are at a relatively safe distance from us. And the chance of an exo-planet or star swinging through our solar system is practically non-existent.

The biggest threat to the planet is living on the planet... They're these weird, bipedal creatures called "humans."

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neverslipsorsleeps t1_j4e67g2 wrote

Reply to Fear of space/bright stars.. by throwawaymanop

I have no science to offer you, just encouragement. For years, I had a weird mild phobia of starry sky. It would make me physically sick. Over time, it went away, thankfully, probably around the age of 25 or so.

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sg3niner t1_j4e5hxe wrote

Reply to Fear of space/bright stars.. by throwawaymanop

Space is big.

REALLY big.

99.999999999999% of stuff is incomprehensibly far from you.

You can reliably worry more about dying from an attack by a hippopotamus, that you should worry about anything from space hurting you.

Except the sun. Wear sunscreen. Seriously.

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Maplicious2017 t1_j4e4sdj wrote

Reply to comment by Kitchen_Philosophy29 in The multiverse by Manureofhistory

Not necessarily, the idea of the multiverse isn't only a change in natural laws, it's a change in variables.

In one universe everything can be the same save for an atom bouncing left or right.

Or it could be one in which atoms don't exist.

The trouble is that we currently have no way of observing those different possibilities to know if they can exist or not, not to mention if observing them will change them in any way like in quantum physics.

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