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Thread: Two types of infinity...

  1. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    Olber's paradox, perhaps originating in the 17th century, almost guarantees that there is some finitude to the universe, otherwise why is the night sky dark? It should be full of light from the infinitely many stars that have had an infinite amount of time to reach us.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27_paradox
    Dark is a relative term. It is dark in comparison to what? We have adapted to sunlight. Imagine. If we had adapted to so-called "darkness." the light from the sun would blind us. We have different degrees of light just as well as different degrees of darkness. Darkness is far from meaning lack of light.
    Please don't try to get me entangle with that other famous dark night astronomers talk about.
    The future is about densities an how they behave. Hope you grasp that.

  2. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by cafolini View Post
    Dark is a relative term. It is dark in comparison to what? We have adapted to sunlight. Imagine. If we had adapted to so-called "darkness." the light from the sun would blind us. We have different degrees of light just as well as different degrees of darkness. Darkness is far from meaning lack of light.
    Please don't try to get me entangle with that other famous dark night astronomers talk about.
    The future is about densities an how they behave. Hope you grasp that.
    I don't get it, but that's OK. There are a lot of things I don't understand.

    What I find interesting about Olber's paradox is that if the universe were infinite, we would not be able to exist anywhere in it. It would be too bright and far too hot. There would be no darkness at all.

  3. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    Olber's paradox, perhaps originating in the 17th century, almost guarantees that there is some finitude to the universe, otherwise why is the night sky dark? It should be full of light from the infinitely many stars that have had an infinite amount of time to reach us.
    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    What I find interesting about Olber's paradox is that if the universe were infinite, we would not be able to exist anywhere in it. It would be too bright and far too hot. There would be no darkness at all.
    Wow....

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    Hehe, I have not thought about this for a while. Of course, there are many things in the universe astronomers back then had not observed compared to those of today.
    I would immediately suggest the shadows cast by an infinite number of white dwarfs could at least contribute, and galactic key-ways of light absorbing materials which are charged to capacity by photons and then just convert it to heat. But I am generally just plucking random ideas from a hat - which I'm sure astronomers do also.

    An idea of an infinite universe which bothers me, is that infinity would have to eventually repeat numbers again here and there. In infinity, eventually somewhere there would be a planet exactly like ours, called Earth, with people exactly like us, with the same names, absolutely identical. Eventually anyway, in infinity, because the chance of it occurring is the same chance anything has to occur.

    This leads me to believe that in an infinite universe, anything you could possibly imagine would have to exist, somewhere, eventually. This is infinity we are talking about. That seems a lot simpler than everything that did exist in an infinite universe, could be possibly imagined by you. No matter how wild an imagination is, it would surely be belittled!

  5. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by slipee View Post
    I would immediately suggest the shadows cast by an infinite number of white dwarfs could at least contribute, and galactic key-ways of light absorbing materials which are charged to capacity by photons and then just convert it to heat.
    I hadn't thought of there being enough objects out there blocking the infinite number of stars as a way around Olbers' paradox. It might be covered in the article below:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27_paradox

    It looks like the universe has to expand even in a finite big bang scenario to get a dark night.

  6. #21
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    I do acknowledge the concept suggested here, YesNo. I suppose the other thing worth mentioning is the limited spectrum our eyes and brains can perceive.
    Bees for example, can see ultra violet patterns on flowers which are invisible to us, as a means to identify and/or attract to them. Flowers have brilliant patterns invisible to our naked eye. This of course leads to the possibility that there is quite possibly is a universal saturation of some sort, and all it would need is something to interpret it as 'light', and it would be perceived as so - which I think someone mentioned something to before ^^.
    Oh and I'm by no means on a mission to contradict the theory. In some way I think I can agree with it somewhat, or at least agree to a point that given other conditions were correct that it's possible. All we know is that we know nothing! But as above, so below, and knowing ourselves is key to knowing what we are a part of.
    Z ⇌ Z2 + C
    If anything I'll play devil's advocate until the cows come home!

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