Iamon_lyme: Singularities (as the scientists say are not bound by large scale physics but quantum level physics.
......Art's point of.... "which I can't explain but then neither can physics." ... is false.

Einstein's physics do not work at the quantum level, but he was ok with that and so are the scientists today. If quantum level physics does not work they.. we couldn't be here. Electrons move by quantum rules.. Plants in their daily photosynthesis use quantum level physics to be ultra efficient in the absorption and utilisation of sunlight.

As to things being infinite..... I'm not sure it is... relatively.

"but I don't think it's because of some crack leaking gravity from another dimension into ours."

It's not a crack.. a fold, a bend, a rotation.. but not a crack... and it's still in one of our dimensions just one of the many our eyes were not designed to see.

"Scientists should stop screwing around with fancy and imaginative theories, and go back to finding simple and common sense anwsers."

.... why? It is our curiosity at the majesty of the universe that lets us understand how wonderful it is. We still are learning about our Universe, seeing as less then a hundred years ago we did not know there was one... just a galaxy as far as Earth knew!!

(V): "seeing as less then a hundred years ago we did not know there was one."
lol..better check google

Bwild: What to show something that anyone who's interested in the name "Edwin Hubble" would know....

"....Edwin Hubble's arrival at Mount Wilson, California, in 1919 coincided roughly with the completion of the 100-inch (2.5 m) Hooker Telescope, then the world's largest telescope. At that time, the prevailing view of the cosmos was that the universe consisted entirely of the Milky Way Galaxy. Using the Hooker Telescope at Mt. Wilson, Hubble identified Cepheid variables (a kind of star; see also standard candle) in several spiral nebulae, including the Andromeda Nebula. His observations, made in 1922–1923, proved conclusively that these nebulae were much too distant to be part of the Milky Way and were, in fact, entire galaxies outside our own. This idea had been opposed by many in the astronomy establishment of the time, in particular by the Harvard University-based Harlow Shapley. Hubble's discovery, announced on January 1, 1925, [8] fundamentally changed the view of the universe...."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hubble

... Better learn some astronomical history Bwild.

(V): you said..""seeing as less then a hundred years ago we did not know there was one.""
then you claim I need history lessons by saying this...""....Edwin Hubble's arrival at Mount Wilson, California, in 1919 coincided roughly with the completion of the 100-inch (2.5 m) Hooker Telescope, then the world's largest telescope. At that time, the prevailing view of the cosmos was that the universe consisted entirely of the Milky Way Galaxy."
evidently, mankind knew there was a universe...just didnt know how large...which is still the case today.
there have been astronomers throughout time.
give it a rest...no one thinks your very smart on these matters....google it!! lol

Bwild: Yes there were astronomers throughout time... but most were limited by the lack of good equipment such as high resolution telescopes and thought this galaxy was it!! Just as in the past they thought the Earth was at the centre of the solar system.

I don't need to google. You may if you do, but much has been said in the news and talks on history since the launch of the Hubble Telescope, plus science/history classes of old covering such matters I still remember.

(V): so you admit that this(""seeing as less then a hundred years ago we did not know there was one."") statement was indeed wrong!

Bwild: No. Because there is a big difference between a galaxy being the universe and 100's of billions of galaxies being the universe, each containing 100's of billions of stars.

(V): I'm being half serious and half flippant about this, so both of those states exist at the same time. That too was a joke, by the way. But my original thought was simply how can everything we see now have existed in various stages of size? The enitre universe existed in an area the size of a basketball, and even when all matter and energy was nearly fully formed, it existed within an area you could in no way now fit the entire universe in. I understand how space itself was being defined during this time, and how on the quantum level the rules defining space can break down as well as other defining features we have come to see as immutable (on a larger nonquantum scale) We all see with the same limited senses. I am simply admitting to my inability to understand everything from the limited perspective of being a creature who cannot hope to "see" how it all works, but must by neccessity rely on my ability to understand it. Everyone relies on faith to some degree, "the evidence of things not seen". But even faith must be based on something other than what we are able to imagine. The mistake many scientists make is to poo poo faith as religious nonsense, while at the same time relying on faith to move their own nebulous theories forward. I am not against science, I am all for it. What I am against is wanton irrationality in the so called search for "truth" by some who are not as intellectually honest as they would like me to believe. Just because I believe in an intelligent designer doesn't mean I can be fooled by 'science-speak'. It is a m;istake to over estimate or underestimate someone based solely on what they believe about God.

Iamon_lyme: Basically trusting it does work as we know it does. I tried years ago after a 'dream' visualising being one and at the same time everywhere at the same time and it does do your head in as we are not use to it in a physical universe.

"The mistake many scientists make is to poo poo faith as religious nonsense, while at the same time relying on faith to move their own nebulous theories forward."

Like when in the cold war they were training psychics to spy.

.... mmmmm It makes sense now

(V): I've never tried visualizing being everywhere at the same time, but I did try to visualize what a space time curviature might look like. It was very disorienting. Couldn't look at it for more than a few seconds at a time. What I fiound interesting about the thought experiment was that I envisioned space contracting, instead of dialating, which at least one theory of gravity says is what actually happens. Try envisioning a vacuum within a vacuum and you will see (and feel) the problem of visualizing it. It felt like a carnival ride. The funny thing about it was that for the most part I got it right, but apparently everything I "saw" was opposite and in reverse order of what gravity (as time dialation) is supposed to be. Space is already a vacuum, so the only way you can acheive a vacuum within a vacuum is by jiggering time so that volumes and distances can change while still remaining to be the same volumes and distances. What I mean is, instead of using a yardstick to measure another yardstick, you can use time to measure a yardstick, If time speeds up the yardstick becomes shorter, slow time down it becomes longer, but in each scenario it still remains the same 36 inches. I watch a few videos of the 12 year old math juggernault, and his grasp of mathematical principles is impressive. I'm not much good at math, so now I know how my kids felt when I tried explaining their homework to them. That's how I felt watching Jacob Barnett explaining calculus and singularities and his thoughts on light speed etc. I was amused and intimidated, but overall I came away with a big smile on my face. I joked about how I hope he doesn't use crayons on the family room wall. He doesn't. He uses an erasable marker to scribble on windows. Close enough. :op

Iamon_lyme: Not really. It is and it isn't. I think it'd fairer to say .. it just has no breathable atmosphere. Dark matter/energy exists and we can't see them, particles of ice and gases float about. The sun is giving off constant bits of matter through expulsions as well as various forms of energy. It's like visualising air and seeing in the emptiness all the other forms of energy (such as ley lines)

Same as we say Zero G.... it isn't. You still have various tugs and pulls from other stellar bodies, if we didn't.. there would be no life. Our sun causes enough curvature to cause the Earth to not want to go in a straight line. To get to the moon, you just have to get far enough away from the Earth so that the moon's gravity has enough of a 'slope' to let us slide into an intersection.

As to the kid.. yes he's still learning.. but as one old song bite use to say "don't believe the hype".. He's smart, a good IQ (though personally I think IQ can be an empty yardstick in some ways) and saying he'll out prove Einstein ... ... Maybe he'll manage to merge the Macro and Micro universes ... He has more importantly the ability to question, to look a things and probabilities. It's like when I did science as a kid. I got told lightning came from the ground up.... but that was wrong, and as I found out just recently (the final piece of the story) .. it can start from the ground or from the clouds.. both at the same time, as well as (from about a decade ago) helps to clear certain particles from around the Earth that in time could cause radiation damage to our way of life.

Just the theory my science teacher taught was incomplete from I gather the 1930's, just as how I was taught in the 70's about electrons and how they move was incomplete.</b>

Iamon_lyme:

> I did try to visualize what a space time curviature might look like.

Just remember, when they talk of curvature, they are not talking of the one-dimensional curvature of a two-dimensional curve (for example, the curvature of a circle is the reciprocal of its radius). We can visualize the "curvature" of a line or a sphere. To us curvature is what we see in Euclidean space.

The curvature they talk about is higher dimensional. In three dimensions curvature cannot be visualized so simply. It is expressed as the product of a matrix with orthonormal columns and a three dimenisonal vector. In higher dimensions curvature is expressed as the products of tensors in Riemann manifolds. It is too complex to be visualized in terms our brain can understand. It is understood only in mathematical terms, and therefore, it is an abstract concept. To make it short, Einstein used tensor calculus for his theory of relativity. If you are familiar with the math and the theorems of course it makes sense. If you are like most of us, it is all another language entirely.

> Try envisioning a vacuum within a vacuum

We forget sometimes that "vacuum" is a human concept to indicate the absense of matter in some enclosed space. In reality most of space is made of "vacuum" (for example, atoms have a tiny nucleus and even tinier electrons in orbit around it). However, elementary particles (like electrons, protons, etc.) have a dual character of a particle and a wave. That is the product of the quantum mechanical description of matter.

The real problem that physicists have is that quantum mechanics and relativity theory don't "mix", meaning that there is no exact solution when trying to solve relativistic quantum mechanics (like the Schroedinger equation) into higher dimensions. The attempts at these solutions is what things like superstring theory tries to do. Relativity is good at describing the universe in the huge scale of stars, galaxies, etc. While quantum mecahnics is good at describing the universe in the tiny scale of atoms and molecules. However, there is no unified theory thaht describes the two of them with the same math.

However, some day we will have a prodigy (maybe this gifted child) who will be able to do so. He has the potential and he will do well as long as he is allowed to be a child, and unrealistic expectations are not put upon him.

Übergeek 바둑이: quantum mechanics and relativity theory don't "mix", but they have to be connected in some way, so the problem isn't that they don't mix. The problem is we don't know where the link is, or more to the point, what it is. This is just a shot in the dark, but has anyone tried incorporating the theory of large numbers into the mix? the (quantum) micro is supposed to be the functional building block of the bigger (relativity) macro, so we might find a connection if we start looking in the right places. If the link isn't where we think it should be, it must be somewhere else.

Iamon_lyme:

> he (quantum) micro is supposed to be the functional building block of the bigger (relativity) macro, we might find a connection if we start looking in the right places

I think the problem is not whether they are connected. Theoretical physicists work on the assumption that there is a connection. However, mathematically (and theoretical physics is in essence mathematics) relativistic quantum mechanics has no exact solutions, and the current theories (such as Hyperstrings) are mere conjectures. There are experiments under way to try to prove that hyperstrings exist, rahter than being mathematical constructs. If that isproven, then physicists can make the claim that relativity and quantum mechanics can be joined in some universal set of physical laws. Well, as with much of theoretical physics, we try to describe the universe, but absolute proofs of certain things (like the Big Bang) elude us because there is no way we can travel back in time to that first moment when the singularity exploded.

We can only wish that we could find exact solutions like Newtonian mechanics offers. Quantum mechanics deals to a great extent with probabilities, rather than certainties. Even something as commonplace like a helium atom cannot be described with an exact (analytic) solution. So physicists resort to approximation methods (like perturbation theory, LCAO, etc.) based on the hydrogen atom, the only atom with an exact solution. Atoms and molecules are "relativistic", meaning that electrons move at a speed high enough that approaches the speed of light and relativity has to be taken into account in the computations. All that physicists and chemists have are approximate solutions.

Some day a mathematical genius like Gauss, Fermat or Descartes will be born, and he/she will find the mathematics that will revolutionize physics. Until then quantum mechanics and relativity remain distant, yet close enough that phsyicists can almost sense the solutions to the problems.

Übergeek 바둑이: lol Makes me wonder why we try squinting hard enough to 'see' it. But if at least some of our assumptions are right, then maybe we can infer something from them. Like maybe here (where we live and breath) in the macro. what appears to be stable is the result of a natural progression from unstable parts into 'stable' structures, appearing to hold themselves together. If gravity can be described as an illusion (real in effect, but illusory in nature) then maybe parts having no volume can clump to together to create the illusion of volume. When I say illusion I don't mean not real, I mean something appearing to be immutable and real in and of itself. I suggested the theory of large numbers because of how appearance of stability can be acheived through an increasing number of events. Our reality (on the macro level) appears stable to us because that is how we naturally percieve it.

Übergeek 바둑이: it seems counter inuitive, possibilities bubbling up into probabilities until something 'reall appears. It sounds like order naturally evolving froming disorder, which we know doesn't happen at the highter tiers of macro reality. rather we see disorder, and call it entropy. There seems to be a balance between apparent disorder at the micro leading to a natural order at the macro, Maybe this is why, as living creatures composed of mass, there is the equalibrium we need to survive. We are able to exist because of that balance. Here's another strange idea: what if the constant processes at the micro leading eventually to the macro is a pattern resembling what we think happened after the big bang? Fractals deal with larger patterns being made up of similar smaller ones, or another way of saying it, all smaller patterns are foundational to any larger ones.

Iamon_lyme: note to self. wait more than 5 minutes after waking up before posting message to a public board. it took at least that long for me to now figure out what I was talking about.