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  1. #31
    Hung Angel Platinum Poster trish's Avatar
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    Perhaps we should all reserve a table with Douglas Adams, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (or the Big Bang Burger Bar) to discuss it all.....
    Hey, I'm there already; waiting for you guys. Third table from the stage by the port side observation windows.


    "...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.

    "...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by lahabra1976
    Einstein said nothing is absolute...
    By saying that nothing is absolute hasn't he just confirmed one absolute: to wit, that nothing is absolute?


    ceci n'est pas une signature.

  3. #33
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    In the absences of existence, reality resembles the deep, cataclysmic and dark recesses of the inside of Courtney Love's bruised vagina.

    It's dark.....and STINKY.....



  4. #34
    Hung Angel Platinum Poster trish's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by iloveshemales77
    Quote Originally Posted by lahabra1976
    Einstein said nothing is absolute...
    By saying that nothing is absolute hasn't he just confirmed one absolute: to wit, that nothing is absolute?
    Einstein did not in fact say that everything was absolute. I’ll stick out my neck and conjecture that lahabra was referring to the fact that Einstein did show that a number of notions which we took in the 19th century to be absolute were in not. Determinations of simultaneity depend upon the relative motion of the observers making the determinations. Measurements of distance, duration and mass are also dependent upon the relative motions of the observers carrying out the measurements. Einstein did, however, suggest that certain quantities are not relative. The “proper time” between two events is something that everyone, regardless of their relative motion, will agree upon. It was this discovery that lead to the realization that space and time are welded together into one unified four dimensional geometry. Nevertheless, the theory, however absolute, tells us nothing if we cannot deduce from it the views and measurements of a given observer. Observers report the world from their perspective and theory must be able to accommodate and reconcile all appropriate perspectives.

    The question in this thread, in my opinion, goes beyond relativity, because it asks what it would be like if there were nothing; no matter, no space and no time. If there is no place to stand and no time to stand there, there is no perspective to report. The theory of nothing is the simplest theory there is: it says nothing.

    There is a misconception, I think, that at first there was nothing and then there was the big bang. But that way of visualizing it puts time outside the universe, as if there was a time when there was nothing. That‘s not the way cosmologists understand it. The phrase, “big-bang” was invented as a derogatory label by Hoyle and Bondi who were pushing the steady-state theory back in the forties and fifties. The big-bang theory is not a theory about the “start” of the universe. It has always been a theory about the expansion of the universe and the claim that there was no time when it wasn’t expanding. Even though the theory predicts the universe has a finite age, it does not predict there was a very first instant. The theory only concerns itself with the universe. It has no power to deduce anything at all about anything that transcends the universe.

    There are indeed, in the twenty first century, more ambitious theories; e.g. there are theories about multiverses that bubble out of inflationary space-time’s and there are theories about parallel universes in exponentially splitting quantum phase spaces etc. etc. etc. Many of these speculative scenarios incorporate the traditional big bang theory, but they attempt to do much more than the comparatively modest big bang theory tries to do, and they should not be confused with the big bang theory.

    Now I suppose one way to interpret the question raised in this thread is to assume the multiverse theory and simply ask “what were things like when our particular universe wasn’t around?” But that’s kind of a cheat because it quickly provokes the question, “what would it be like if there weren’t a multiverse?” which brings us back to situation wherein there’s no place to stand and no time to stand there.


    "...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.

    "...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.

  5. #35
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    ahh, the creation of the universe, the big bang theory and multiverse ideas. One of the only theories that Scientists havent quite got their head around and thus one of the common motifs in religion vs science arguments.



  6. #36
    Hung Angel Platinum Poster trish's Avatar
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    That would be three (of the only?) ideas scientists haven't got their heads around.


    "...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.

    "...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.

  7. #37

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    if the force of gravity is too strong in any given universe, it collapses into itself, Planck Epoch happens/universe explodes again. before the big bang there was probably a shrinking universe filled with desperate uber advanced lifeforms that fed in a mathematical dna stream to the supermassive black hole at the center of their galaxy to seed life once again right before they escaped into the next membrane just before their universe was annihilated and ours was born.

    /startrek



  8. #38
    Junior Poster nitron's Avatar
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    Default Re: before existence... what did it look like?

    Maybe there was another one? "Turtles all the way".



  9. #39
    Hung Angel Platinum Poster trish's Avatar
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    Default Re: before existence... what did it look like?

    That's tough on the turtles.
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    "...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.

    "...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.

  10. #40
    Senior Member Gold Poster Laphroaig's Avatar
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    Default Re: before existence... what did it look like?

    Quote Originally Posted by trish View Post
    That's tough on the turtles.
    Yep, 4 elephants and a Discworld to support...

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    I believe this may also apply to the original question.

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