IDK anything
There is a Jewish wisdom that says a worm living in a jar of horseradish believes himself to be in the sweetest place there is. Not to touch a perfect proverb, but it means that whoever, whatever, wherever we are in life, we believe that's the only place to be. It came home to me this week in something I read describing Iran's Supreme Leader, a self-certain religious despot, as having come to the job from obscure nobody and nothing, and bringing with him a total ignorance of world knowledge and lack of intellectual curiosity; believing he knows all.
He is not alone among authorities.
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Now about me: for one thing, I'm a strong believer that the pictures I post with my +Time blogposts don't need to reflect anything I may say in my blogposts. Here's a picture of son Joe, for example, holding Hendrix, whom he claims as grandson. Joe is 64, H is a few weeks old. Joe seems to be introducing H to motorcycles.
H's parents may not want the photo up, and if so, I'll take it down, but he's pretty cute.
And here's a pic of Joe being held by me when Joe was maybe a bit older than H is now, but not much; and I was 25.
The top pic I snapped on tv news that they showed the universe as snapped by the world's largest digital camera at an observatory in Chile.
And here's one that puts us in our place.
What is outside and beyond "the observable Universe"? AI speculates:
AI Overview
How Do We Know There Is Anything Beyond The Observable ...
The area beyond the observable universe is unknown and potentially unknowable. The observable universe is limited by the speed of light and the age of the universe, meaning we can only see light that has had time to reach us since the Big Bang. What lies beyond this boundary is a subject of speculation and scientific theory.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
The Observable Universe:
Defined by the distance light has traveled since the Big Bang, approximately 46.5 billion light-years in radius.
The Cosmic Horizon:
This is the boundary of the observable universe, marking the limit of what we can currently see.
Expansion of the Universe:
The universe is expanding, and some regions are receding from us faster than the speed of light, making their light forever unreachable.
Possibilities Beyond:
More of the same: It could be more space containing galaxies, stars, and planets, just like what we observe.
A different kind of space: There might be a barrier or a fundamentally different type of space beyond the observable universe.
Multiverse: The concept of a multiverse suggests our universe is just one of many, potentially with different physical laws.
Inaccessibility:
Due to the expansion of the universe and the finite speed of light, we cannot directly observe or interact with anything beyond the cosmic horizon.
Where is the center of the universe?
By Rob Coyne, University of Rhode Island
Where is the center of the universe?
Only a century ago, scientists were struggling to reconcile what seemed a contradiction in Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Published in 1915, and already widely accepted worldwide by physicists and mathematicians, the theory assumed the universe was static. As in, that it was unchanging, unmoving and immutable. In short, Einstein believed the size and shape of the universe today was, more or less, the same size and shape it had always been.
But when astronomers looked into the night sky at faraway galaxies with powerful telescopes, they saw hints the universe was anything but that. These new observations suggested the opposite. That it was, instead, expanding.
Scientists soon realized Einstein’s theory didn’t actually say the universe had to be static. The theory could support an expanding universe as well. Indeed, by using the same mathematical tools provided by Einstein’s theory, scientists created new models that showed the universe was, in fact, dynamic and evolving.
I’ve spent decades trying to understand general relativity, including in my current job as a physics professor teaching courses on the subject. I know wrapping your head around the idea of an ever-expanding universe can feel daunting. And part of the challenge is overriding your natural intuition about how things work. For instance, it’s hard to imagine something as big as the universe not having a center at all, but physics says that’s the reality.
The space between galaxies
First, let’s define what’s meant by expansion. On Earth, expanding means something is getting bigger. And in regard to the universe, that’s true, sort of. Expansion might also mean everything is getting farther from us, which is also true with regard to the universe. Point a telescope at distant galaxies and they all do appear to be moving away from us.
What’s more, the farther away they are, the faster they appear to be moving. Those galaxies also seem to be moving away from each other. So it’s more accurate to say that everything in the universe is getting farther away from everything else, all at once.
The Big Bang was not a single point
This idea is subtle but critical. It’s easy to think about the creation of the universe like exploding fireworks: Start with a Big Bang, and then all the galaxies in the universe fly out in all directions from some central point.
But that analogy isn’t correct. Not only does it falsely imply that the expansion of the universe started from a single spot, which it didn’t, but it also suggests that the galaxies are the things that are moving, which isn’t entirely accurate.
It’s not so much the galaxies that are moving away from each other. It’s the space between galaxies, the fabric of the universe itself, that’s ever-expanding as time goes on. In other words, it’s not really the galaxies themselves that are moving through the universe. It’s more that the universe itself is carrying them farther away as it expands.
A common analogy is to imagine sticking some dots on the surface of a balloon. As you blow air into the balloon, it expands. Because the dots are stuck on the surface of the balloon, they get farther apart. Though they may appear to move, the dots actually stay exactly where you put them, and the distance between them gets bigger simply by virtue of the balloon’s expansion.
Now think of the dots as galaxies and the balloon as the fabric of the universe, and you begin to get the picture.
Unfortunately, while this analogy is a good start, it doesn’t get the details quite right either.
The 4th dimension
Important to any analogy is an understanding of its limitations. Some flaws are obvious: A balloon is small enough to fit in your hand, not so the universe. Another flaw is more subtle. The balloon has two parts: its latex surface and its air-filled interior.
The language of mathematics would describe these two parts of the balloon differently. The balloon’s surface is two-dimensional. If you were walking around on it, you could move forward, backward, left or right, but you couldn’t move up or down without leaving the surface.
Now it might sound like we’re naming four directions here – forward, backward, left and right – but those are just movements along two basic paths: side to side and front to back. That’s what makes the surface two-dimensional: length and width.
The inside of the balloon, on the other hand, is three-dimensional. So you’d be able to move freely in any direction, including up or down … length, width and height.
This is where the confusion lies. The thing we think of as the center of the balloon is a point somewhere in its interior, in the air-filled space beneath the surface.
But in this analogy, the universe is more like the latex surface of the balloon. The balloon’s air-filled interior has no counterpart in our universe, so we can’t use that part of the analogy. Only the surface matters.
So asking, “Where’s the center of the universe?” is somewhat like asking, “Where’s the center of the balloon’s surface?” There simply isn’t one. You could travel along the surface of the balloon in any direction, for as long as you like, and you’d never once reach a place you could call its center because you’d never actually leave the surface.
There is no center of the universe
So, in the same way, you could travel in any direction in the universe and would never find its center because, much like the surface of the balloon, it simply doesn’t have one.
Part of the reason this can be so challenging to comprehend is because of the way the language of mathematics describes the universe. The surface of the balloon has two dimensions, and the balloon’s interior has three. But the universe exists in four dimensions. Because it’s not just about how things move in space, but how they move in time.
Our brains are wired to think about space and time separately. But in the universe, they’re interwoven into a single fabric, called space-time. That unification changes the way the universe works relative to what our intuition expects.
And this explanation doesn’t even begin to answer the question of how something can be expanding indefinitely. Scientists are still trying to puzzle out what powers this expansion.
So, in asking about the center of the universe, we’re confronting the limits of our intuition. The answer we find – everything, expanding everywhere, all at once – is a glimpse of just how strange and beautiful our universe is.
Rob Coyne, Teaching Professor of Physics, University of Rhode Island
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Bottom line: Where is the center of the universe? The center of our solar system is the sun. And the center of our galaxy is a supermassive black hole. So where’s the universe’s center?
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In an expanding Universe, faith is not certainty, but hope and confidence, and it isn't helpful for me to keep remembering that someone (Mark Twain?) said "faith is believing what you know damn well ain't so." My ongoing curiosity involves balancing contemplation about Creation that we call "the Universe" with the religious notion of Creator as expressed in Genesis and the Nicene and Apostles Creeds. Oddly, my balancing act, rather than this,
the balancing act seems more like juggling thoughts
while simultaneously tightrope walking across a chasm:
Everyday I'm hearing and reading more and more about AI, artificial intelligence. And it seems to me that so far, AI hasn't figured out a damn thing, only has compiled with lightning speed a report of what humans already know, think, or believe and have recorded that AI can access. For example, my discrediting experience with AI's religious knowledge so far has been that AI is a Christian fundamentalist. On the other hand, in thinking this morning, I decided to test AI on who or what created the Universe and this is AI's response:
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AI Overview
How was the universe created? |
Space
The most widely accepted scientific explanation for the creation of the universe is the Big Bang theory. This theory posits that the universe originated from an extremely hot, dense state approximately 13.8 billion years ago. This initial state expanded rapidly, and as it cooled, the fundamental forces and particles of the universe formed, eventually leading to the formation of stars, galaxies, and everything we observe today.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
The Singularity:
The Big Bang theory proposes that the universe began from a singularity, a point of infinite density and temperature.
Expansion and Cooling:
This singularity underwent a period of rapid expansion, and as it expanded, it also cooled down.
Formation of Particles and Forces:
As the universe cooled, fundamental particles like quarks and leptons formed, which then combined to create protons and neutrons. These particles further combined to form the first atomic nuclei, primarily hydrogen and helium.
Atoms, Stars, and Galaxies:
As the universe continued to cool, electrons combined with nuclei to form neutral atoms. Gravity then played a crucial role in pulling together matter to form stars and galaxies.
Ongoing Expansion:
The universe continues to expand, and the rate of expansion is currently accelerating, possibly due to dark energy.
While the Big Bang theory is the leading scientific explanation, some religious and philosophical viewpoints offer different accounts of the universe's origin, often involving a creator or a cyclical nature of existence.
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Being somewhat of a Stevejobsian (don't be caught up in dogma, which is the result of other people's thinking), so far I'm managing to juggle creeds doctrine dogma with what I've studied, and what I've seen myself through telescopes in my lifetime - - and currently expanding by the revelations of JWST, Hubble, and yesterday that digital camera in Chile. Humans define divinities in our own image to satisfy our fears about the unknown, and human authority specifies what we are required to Believe; thus, creeds, doctrine, dogma. My experience in my religious vocation is that people are content to accept what they are taught about their religion and go on about their daily lives; but religion is and has been my daily life, and my vocation requires that I keep on seeking and searching and examining and seeking and seeking and seeking; and my seeking takes me far from what conferences of men decided centuries ago that I would be required to stand and say I believe. I know nothing; but in that Adonai Elohim Melek ha-Olam the Creatorbecame Incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, I believe God is bigger than worrying about forgiving my sins so I can get into heaven (a singulary self-centered view of God), but that God would have become incarnate only to show and tell me how to live into the godly image in which I am created.
RSF&PTL
T89&c