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Is it possible the universe is infinitely complex? i.e, "turtles all the way down?". I find the concept of duality and replication in physics very interesting.

Is it possible the universe is infinitely complex? i.e, "turtles all the way down?". I find the concept of duality and replication in physics very interesting. Everything seems to have an opposite, with properties such that when these opposites come together, they form a bigger unit, which itself has an opposite.

cooper_ganglia 3y ago
I don't "believe" too many things that can't be evidentiarily substantiated, but as silly of a thing to reference for this kind of discussion, I personally have the irrational, unscientific belief that this Simpsons opening is unironically the most accurate model of the Universe that we have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycvlJ9XMd94&ab_channel=caktalfraktal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycvlJ9XMd94&ab_channel=cakta...
- mettamage 3y ago
  There is a fractal-like nature to the universe due to certain math thingies working out on all levels (e.g. scale free networks/power laws being all over the place).
  - lying4fun 3y ago
    The other day I was washing dishes and there was some water dilluted milk residue in my plate, but due to plate having been moved around it painted a nebula like pattern - it was beautiful, a sight to behold. So I thought what’s the invariant here between the milk and nebulas that make them look the same. Do you think that stuff you mentioned could explain this and countless similar phenomena
- lying4fun 3y ago
  I’m going to entertain this literally because it’s fun: so we need to zoom out enough to find those big galaxy surrounding atoms which are actually universes, or conversely to zoom in more to find galaxies and a universe within atoms. But it seems that there’s either missing understanding how to cross that zoom in/out threshold or it’s impossible by the laws of physics to zoom so far to make a full circle, like it’s forbidden for the snake to bite its tail. I imagine people have discussed this stuff a lot, and came up with better analogies and more nuanced models
  - andoando 3y ago
    Yeah thats my thought too! What if there was a whole universe inside of an atom? Or on the other hand, we and everything we observe is just a single atom in a greater collection of atoms forming what is table to some other consciousness? I know I probably sound like a complete goon, but it makes a lot of sense to me. (I just watched the simpson video. haha, I thought I was being original)
    - tauntz 3y ago
      Shower thought: maybe not even an atom but what if our "universe" is a short-lived quark or antiquark? For an observer in the "next level" universe, that quark would exist only for 10^-24 seconds (or whatever the lifetime of quarks is) but for us, that's the whole lifetime of the universe. And it's turtles all the way down indeed, with infinite universes all over the place..
      - andoando 3y ago
        Which would also mean, there is an opposite to our universe that is our anti-quark :]
sph 3y ago
When I was a curious kid, I asked my father the opposite: what if there is one fundamental physical rule that forbids us to know everything about the universe? Something that we will continuously bump against without being able to resolve further, by definition. Is there such a thing as Gödel's incompleteness theorems in physics?
- andoando 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

cooper_ganglia 3y ago

I don't "believe" too many things that can't be evidentiarily substantiated, but as silly of a thing to reference for this kind of discussion, I personally have the irrational, unscientific belief that this Simpsons opening is unironically the most accurate model of the Universe that we have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycvlJ9XMd94&ab_channel=caktalfraktal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycvlJ9XMd94&ab_channel=cakta...

mettamage 3y ago
There is a fractal-like nature to the universe due to certain math thingies working out on all levels (e.g. scale free networks/power laws being all over the place).
- lying4fun 3y ago
  The other day I was washing dishes and there was some water dilluted milk residue in my plate, but due to plate having been moved around it painted a nebula like pattern - it was beautiful, a sight to behold. So I thought what’s the invariant here between the milk and nebulas that make them look the same. Do you think that stuff you mentioned could explain this and countless similar phenomena
lying4fun 3y ago
I’m going to entertain this literally because it’s fun: so we need to zoom out enough to find those big galaxy surrounding atoms which are actually universes, or conversely to zoom in more to find galaxies and a universe within atoms. But it seems that there’s either missing understanding how to cross that zoom in/out threshold or it’s impossible by the laws of physics to zoom so far to make a full circle, like it’s forbidden for the snake to bite its tail. I imagine people have discussed this stuff a lot, and came up with better analogies and more nuanced models
- andoando 3y ago
  Yeah thats my thought too! What if there was a whole universe inside of an atom? Or on the other hand, we and everything we observe is just a single atom in a greater collection of atoms forming what is table to some other consciousness? I know I probably sound like a complete goon, but it makes a lot of sense to me. (I just watched the simpson video. haha, I thought I was being original)
  - tauntz 3y ago
    Shower thought: maybe not even an atom but what if our "universe" is a short-lived quark or antiquark? For an observer in the "next level" universe, that quark would exist only for 10^-24 seconds (or whatever the lifetime of quarks is) but for us, that's the whole lifetime of the universe. And it's turtles all the way down indeed, with infinite universes all over the place..
    - andoando 3y ago
      Which would also mean, there is an opposite to our universe that is our anti-quark :]

sph 3y ago

When I was a curious kid, I asked my father the opposite: what if there is one fundamental physical rule that forbids us to know everything about the universe? Something that we will continuously bump against without being able to resolve further, by definition. Is there such a thing as Gödel's incompleteness theorems in physics?

andoando 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle