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Some of that zooming in made me feel pretty damn uncomfortable. It really is f'ing massive out there huh. Makes me wonder what this is all about, I'm sure it's
by neom 2y ago
Some of that zooming in made me feel pretty damn uncomfortable. It really is f'ing massive out there huh. Makes me wonder what this is all about, I'm sure it's something, I wonder what. :)
- geenkeuse 2y agoNo Man's Sky
- alchemist1e9 2y agoThis is down voted as a joke yet it is curious that with each upgrade of resolution we get we just see more and more. I always ponder how if we looked at the universe in terms of approximate processing power for a simulation of it that distances and mass are not so relevant but information is. The complexity of quantum mechanical systems within a single living cell is probably much more complex processing than a star. Anyway No Man’s Sky I understand to be a procedurally generated game and not much more than that.
- wayoverthecloud 2y agoI think that too. That it's surely meant to be something. But sometimes I think what does "meaning" even mean? Does universe really have any "meaning", the term that humans invented and that even they are unsure of? Then, I think it's a big randomness, a random accident, a big joke, just happening with nothing to make sense of.
- imchillyb 2y agoSo many rules, laws, and systems for all of this to be random. Seems a waste of good code if everything is random. Is an ecosystem random? What happens when one outside force is added to an ecosystem? There's plenty of examples around the globe of this. Life doesn't 'find a way' and balance. The ecosystem is damaged, and often times destroyed by adding a single non-native species. That doesn't seem random does it? Randomness should have error correction, as it's random. Doesn't seem to though.
- frabjoused 2y agoMy money is on it just being a playing field for the game of life. A damn good one at that.
- andsoitis 2y ago> Randomness should have error correction, as it's random. Randomness itself doesn't have error correction, but systems that generate or use randomness may have checks to ensure they function correctly. Error correction applies to data or signal integrity, which is a separate concept from pure randomness.
- felizuno 2y agoI've been convinced that random is so maximally inclusive that there is no error category. Obviously uniformity is an anti-random condition that would bait the label "error" but I think it's still perfectly random to flip a coin tails 2, 4, 6, 6k times consecutively and the uniformity is simply a shocking instance of random. To your point, I don't think random implies balance though I understand that statistically this is the expected outcome of large set randomness such as ...the universe... (OP) Many of my thoughts on randomness are seeded by David Deutsch's "Beginning of infinity" which is an interesting read FWTW
- semi-extrinsic 2y agoRandomness and probabilities can be incredibly hard to wrap our heads around. A deck only has 52 cards, but you shuffle it properly, it's essentially guaranteed that nobody in human history has ended up with the same order as you just did.
- grvbck 2y ago> A deck only has 52 cards, but you shuffle it properly, it's essentially guaranteed that nobody in human history has ended up with the same order as you just did. That fact still messes me up every time! Like, I know very well that 52! is a ridiculously huge number. And still, it feels like "but it's just 52 cards, give me an afternoon and I'll do it, how many combinations can there be?"...
- feoren 2y agoIt's not a joke, because jokes have underlying meaning. It is somewhere between a "random accident" and the only way it could have possibly been given the constraints of fundamental physics. I suspect that everything that could possibly be, is, but it's random that you are you and I am me and we find ourselves here in this corner of this galaxy in this part of the universe which might itself be the inside of a giant black hole. But even if our universe is random, that doesn't mean there's nothing to make sense of. There's lots to make sense of.
- kortilla 2y agoJokes don’t always have meaning. “I want to play a joke on Bob” can very easily mean “I’m just going to torture Bob a bit for my amusement”. The joke will not have meaning to Bob.
- alonsonic 2y agoIt has a meaning to Bob because the joke exists for a reason he can comprehend even he doesn't like it.
- Brian_K_White 2y agoThat's only true if he's aware of it.
- lazide 2y agoBut we try to not talk about Cincinnati.
- kortilla 2y agoNo, bob doesn’t know he’s even being intentionally fucked with. There are many videos of this style of “prank” available on the internet.
- mmooss 2y agoThere is a lot of subtle meaning layered into that: Cleverness: I'm funny and I'm confident enough in it to risk doing it publicly Status: The statuses of you and Bob allow you to play a joke on them. Often such jokes are a public demonstration of status, like children do more explicitly and often unconsciously in the schoolyard. Empathy: 'I say suffering is funny'; it asserts a willingness to violate a taboo, be unempathetic, and therefore potentially dangerous Personal power: I'm powerful and independent enough to do something on a whim etc.
- alok-g 2y ago>> I think it's a big randomness +1. A big randomness, following the laws of Physics that are themselves possibly rooted in something. With that big randomness, by some chance, intelligent life has happened that can wonder. Where's more to be uncovered are in the laws of Physics (and why are they what they are), and thereby better matching the probabilities of the said randomness.
- tsimionescu 2y agoI don't think there's any reason to believe that there can be an explanation for the laws of physics in this sense. Just like the laws of logic, they might just be.
- alok-g 2y agoI agree. There's surely however more to uncover for Physics.
- layer8 2y agoOr it might be the necessary logical consequence of having anything at all.
- AlecSchueler 2y agoI've always thought of it more as the logical consequence of having nothing, the need for there to be a something to oppose it.
- alok-g 2y agoWhen they applied Heisenberg principle to vacuum to bring up zero point energy, Casimir force was found, etc., I understood thtis as the principle opposing nothingness.
- codeulike 2y agoThere is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. - Douglas Adams
- km144 2y agoI don't think the universe can have "meaning" in the human sense, because any potential "meaning" is outside of our field of observation or understanding. If something indeed created the universe or some definitive sequence of events spurred it into existence, I think that would constitute "meaning" enough for humans to be satisfied. But there is almost certainly not way to observe that fact because it is outside of the realm of our possible experiences. But even then, if we knew what caused the universe to exist, we would then be looking at the cause of the universe and wondering what caused that cause to exist. And so I think we'd still be left wondering why anything exists at all at the end of the day.
- smeej 2y agoI think this is why Christians posit that the Creator actually entered into humanity, so we could understand--or at least be as much less wrong in our speculations as we can handle, small as we are. They even got as far as describing God as "uncaused causality" centuries ago, which lined up pretty well with the translation of the name God reportedly gave one of their forbearers from a burning bush, "I am who am," or colloquially, "I'm the one who just is. I am being-itself, not contingent in any way, outside your concepts of 'before' or 'contingent upon.'"
- tsimionescu 2y agoSure, but it is a meaningless take. It posits into existence this being with this property, when you can just as easily posit that the universe itself has this property.
- smeej 2y agoBut the universe can and does change. Something that is, in that most fundamental sense, does not also have potentiality. Anything that can change, that can be "other than it is," must have some potentiality un-actualized, must not fully "be," because there are some things it is not but could be (and, indeed, later will be).
- 2y ago
- veunes 2y agoThat's a deep thought! I think the idea of "meaning" is something we created to make sense of the world around us
- renegade-otter 2y agoThe Cosmic Deep State went to great lengths to make all of this very.... big.
- kfrzcode 2y agoWondering is the what.
- downboots 2y agoTo my limited knowledge it's not even clear what the edges are but I think it's probably safe to say that the bigger it is, the more complexity you can cram in there.
- dyauspitr 2y agoIt’s ridiculous. That final zoomed in image that showed one galaxy has maybe 300 million stars in it. Just that one. The scope is… unbelievable silly.
- cameldrv 2y agoTake a look at the Hubble ultra deep field image. It’s a tiny part of the sky but it’s hundreds of galaxies. It’s hard to wrap your head around…
- Keysh 2y agoProbably closer to 300 billion stars. (It's roughly the same size as the Milky Way, which is estimated to have ~ 100 to 400 billion stars.)
- cubefox 2y agoUnbelievable
- dyauspitr 2y agoYeah, that’s what I meant to type. 300 billion.
- mixmastamyk 2y agoBillions and Billions —Sagan
- yread 2y agoYeah. Do you want to donate your liver?
- Refusing23 2y agosomeone made a larger universe a few blocks down the road, and so we made a larger one just to one-up him
- DrBazza 2y ago“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable."
- layer8 2y agoIt’s even more “massive” down below. There are only 27 orders of magnitude between human size and the size of the observable universe, but 35 orders of magnitude between human size and the Planck length. ;)
- ThomasBHickey 2y ago'Fundamentals' by Frank Wilczek explores this: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/554034/fundamentals-by-frank-wilczek/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/554034/fundamentals...
- worldsayshi 2y agoIt could really be much larger beyond the observable horizon though? But I guess we will never know.
- seanw444 2y agoUnless faster-than-light travel becomes possible.
- layer8 2y agoIt might, and that’s part of the reason why I put a smiley. On the other hand, the larger you go, the less relevant it becomes, because if the light cones don’t touch then it might just as well be a separate universe.
- tsimionescu 2y agoIt could also be much smaller below the planck scale, but not causally connected to our level. That is, nothing in known physics prevents their being entire universes of particles that are so small that it is impossible to ever detect them with any of the Standard Model particles.
- worldsayshi 2y agoRight, can we reasonably rule out that such interactions don't happen in special circumstances that are hard for us to measure? Like in stars or black holes? (Or randomly and very seldom but often enough in vast interstellar space to give rise to dark matter like phenomenon?)
- elorant 2y agoPerhaps that's what's required to have intelligent life spontaneously appear and evolve to our level.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoThe actual problem is that we were made early enough to begin to understand the full scale of it, but we're still not mature enough to go out there and explore it. Therefore, you can reason that now is the right time to get behind anything that pushes us beyond the Earth.
- mr_mitm 2y agoThese distances are well outside the scope of exploration. Getting to the next solar system is already a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Getting to the next galaxy? Forget it. Getting to these galaxies we see in the picture? Absolutely no way. I know people like to be optimistic about these things but it's honestly pure wishful thinking.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoOnce we have fusion reactors, it won't be.
- nojs 2y agoYour fusion reactor will still take a while to travel 420 million light-years.
- Night_Thastus 2y agoFusion reactors won't really help. Sure, you can accelerate indefinitely - but only at maybe 1G or a bit more if you don't want to kill the occupants. Then you have to flip and decelerate. Unless we find a way to freeze/stasis people, the limits are still shockingly small. We'd need to start cracking some kind of jumping/FTL/etc technology to have any hope of real exploration.
- dreamcompiler 2y agoWell... you don't need to freeze people if you can travel at a substantial fraction of c, because of time dilation. Caveats: 1. It's really, really hard to supply enough energy to go that fast, even with fusion power. 2. Your passengers won't be able to go home again, because by the time they get back everyone they've ever known will be long dead. 3. Even if you could go that fast, you'll eventually hit a speck of dust and disintegrate.
- bane 2y agoThere's plenty of space out in space!
- vjk800 2y agoYeah and the smallest thing that got zoomed in in the video was a galaxy. Like our milky way galaxy, so still fucking huge.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoThis one makes me emotional, greatly helped by the Vangelis soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoW8Tf7hTGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoW8Tf7hTGA
- grues-dinner 2y agoWhat really gets me is how much of that virtual infinity is completely, utterly off-limits to us for all eternity. Trillions upon trillions of planets and stars that will just wink out one day, never to be seen again. Short of some extremely radical new physics, humans will never, ever reach these other galaxies. Maybe the Magellanic Clouds, and Andromeda (which is coming to us). Even the most optimistic sci-fi like Star Trek balks at traversing intergalactic space and they have warp drive, wormholes and sometimes go to other dimensions!
- CrispyKerosene 2y agoI wasn't prepared for an existential crisis this morning.