h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

//both?

"I would say the physical universe emcompasses all matter and energy within all the dimensions, including time."

The sort of unsubtle sophistry I've come to expect of Christians, but I'm not playing. I did not ask for a definition of the phrase "physical universe". I asked for a definition of the word "universe".

While we're at it, I'd be hugely amused and interested to hear a definition of the word "predicuded", as in "predicuded bigot". I have, I like to think, an extensive functional vocabulary in English. "Predicuded" is not only a word I have never, ever heard or seen before, if it's a typo I can't even work out what our rather confused Professor might have been trying to say. Any clues, Prof?

SoRB

Pre- before, as in "premeditated"
di- twice, as in "dioxide"
cude- contemporary slang; contraction of "cool dude"

So you used to be twice as cool.

It looks like the threads have merged already, just as Fluffy K predicted!

<"I would say the physical universe emcompasses all matter and energy within all the dimensions, including time."
The sort of unsubtle sophistry I've come to expect of Christians, but I'm not playing. I did not ask for a definition of the phrase "physical universe". I asked for a definition of the word "universe". >

Well, is there a difference for you between the "universe" and the "physical universe"?



Let's analyse the word "predicuded", as in "predicuded bigot". I believe it's actually a synonym of prejudiced, but you won't find it in any dictionaries for some reason. I think goes beyond being just prejudiced. I gather it has the sense of outspoken and entrenched prejudice. So you can be prejudiced, but no one will necessarily know, whereas you can't be predicuded without people knowing.

"A simple answer to the question would be we don’t know."

Duh.

"There are certain problems when asking a question like this. First of all we need to know how we define life. You may say that something is alive if it uses energy in an orderly way, it has a boundary and it can reproduce. However this doesn’t work if you think about it."

Why didn't you think about it instead of typing it then? Duh.

"There is also the term ‘life, as we know it’. There is the possibility of life forms that can survive in ways we can’t. In an episode of Star Trek their Tricorders could not detect a life form until they altered them to detect a silicon life from."

Oh dear. We've gone from fairy stories about a big daddy in the sky to whether life is detectable by tricorder. Are you sure your mummy knows you're using the computer, PSB?

"Another thing we have to look at is if a life form can survive on a planet. Earth is perfect planet."

This kind of arrogance is called "anthropocentrism". It's particularly common among superstitious people who have a need to believe they are the pinnacle of creation. However, it's sort of forgivable, as superstitions like this take a long time to shift, and the scientific establishment only really disproved the idea of anthropocentrism about five hundred years ago, so you can hardly expect the poor dears to have caught up yet.

"Is has a suitable gravity, it is just the right distance from the Sun to be not too hot and not too cold. It as an oxygen / nitrogen atmosphere"

This is particularly humourous to anyone with a more than very, very crude education in biochemistry. Oxygen is a toxic, corrosive gas. Describing an atmosphere rich in a toxic, corrosive gas as "perfect" is really rather funny, if a little pathetic.

"Andean Indians can survive whilst living in mountain villages as an altitude of 17,000 feet (5,200 meters). They have larger hearts and lungs than us so they can breath normally in air that is too thin for us to breath"

Um... speak for yourself. You may be too obese and lardy to deal with rarefied air. I'm fit and healthy and perfectly capable of operating for extended period in attenuated atmospheres.

"Also Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau showed us that there is life at the bottom of the Mariana Trench"

Wherever do you read this garbage? In what way did Cousteau "show us" there is life there? Did he perhaps ask us to read the report of Lieutenant Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, the only people who've actually been down there? Cousteau certainly has never been there.

You see, it's this slightly pompous attitude ("Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau showed us" - what are you, a National Geographic channel commentator?) combined with obvious ignorance of easily checkable facts that makes you look like an idiot.

It's this that reduces the credibility of EVERYTHING you say. I read your long, long post, and very early in it I find easily demolished tripe. Why should I read on? What incentive have I to check other facts? Only this: it's fun making you look stupid. So on we go...

"south-west of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, at the depth of 36,198 feet (11,033 meters)."

Or in other words, approximately 122 metres BELOW the bottom. Wow. (The real depth is 10,911 m (35,798 ft).) Wrong again...

"Although it is very cold down here the life gets it heat from volcanic vents (called Black Smokers)"

False. There are no black smokers in the Mariana Trench. And life anywhere in any case does not "get its heat" from black smokers. Fundamental misunderstanding of what these things do. Wrong again. See, this is FUN!

"but it still has to survive a pressure of 16,000 pounds per square inch (1,000 kilograms per square centimetre)."

Gosh, that's *almost* accurate, so close in fact I'm not going to make fun of it much.

"However there is a possibility of there being life on other planets. The Galileo probe reported there is life on Earth."

That's rather funny, isn't it? In fact, at the behest of Carl Sagan, the probe was used to test a few specific criteria, now known as the "Sagan criteria for life", specifically strong absorbtion of light at the red end of the spectrum, absorbtion band of molecular oxygen, IR absorbtion due to methane, and modulated narrowband radio waves. This was a test only.

"it also reported life on the Jovian moon Europa."

False.

"As for life out side our Solar System, we have no evidence one way or another."

Duh.

Unless one makes the reasonable extrapolation that since this planet is in no way remarkable, it is probable that neither is life and neither are we.

"The only extra solar life we have a real chance of detecting is intelligent life."

Using current techniques, yes. Predicting future techniques, or lack of them, is a mug's game. One might just as authoritatively have said as recently as the mid 1970s that we had no chance of detecting extra-solar terrestrial planets. And yet we have.

"The term intelligent life means life forms that we can communicate with."

Again, an incredibly anthropocentric viewpoint.

"In the 1950s, when a young American, Frank Drake, was working in a brand new field of radio astronomy, aliens were something no respectable scientist thought about. But Drake took a much broader view. He knew that radio dishes could pick up naturally produced signals from halfway across the Universe."

Does this sound to anyone else like it was copied and pasted from an old textbook aimed at eight year olds?

"This is the Drake equation.

N = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L"

Um... you omitted the divisor on the last parameter. It should be L/Tg, where Tg is the age of the galaxy. Again with the obvious, easily checked errors.

"Distance from Earth to the neatest civilization in light years (ly)."

Absolutely. We certainly don't want to communicate with any untidy civilisations!

"1 civilization. 200,000 ly away."

That's an interesting figure, right there.

Consider: the diameter of this galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years. We're about 26,000 light years out from the centre, or about half way to the edge.

PSB's maths, therefore, that if there's only one other civilisation communicating in this galaxy... it's not in this galaxy. Which seems somewhat self-contradictory, IF you believe PSB knows something as fundamental and simple as the size of the place.

I, on the other hand, prefer to believe PSB is simply plugging numbers into a calculator with no more idea of what they mean than a chimp would have. Expecting a religious person to apply the test of reasonableness ("does this answer to the question make any sense, or is it stupid?") really is expecting too much.

SoRB

"is there a difference for you between the "universe" and the "physical universe"?"

WG, this is becoming tiresome.

It should be obvious that I cannot answer that question without knowing what YOU mean when you say "universe".

Define "universe".

SoRB

Hmm. Looking at post 264, Sorb comes across as a bit of a bully actually.

Post 265<>

Well, you should know whether there's a difference for you between the "universe" and the "physical universe" without having to defer to me.

Anyway, the universe is everything that exists.

"Well, you should know whether there's a difference for you between the "universe" and the "physical universe" without having to defer to me."

On that basis, tell me this: is there a difference for you between a ningi, and a triangular ningi? Don't defer to me, just tell me - is there a difference, for you?

It should be blindingly obvious that unless you know what I mean by "ningi", you simply have no way of even beginning to answer the question.

And if (after you've asked me four or five times) I finally tell you a ningi is a triangular rubber coin 6,800 miles along each side, you may then agree, perhaps, that "ningi" and "triangular ningi" mean the same thing, and the word "triangular" is in fact redundant.

I go to this trouble not simply to be difficult. I do so because your logic seems unsound and your prepending of the word "physical" appeared to be an attempt to wriggle out of a corner you'd painted yourself into. However...

"Anyway, the universe is everything that exists."

OK. Excellent in fact. We finally get there.

So... you assert the following premises:

1. The universe was created by an entity you call God.
2. The universe is everything that exists.

I hope the inconsistency is clear. In case it's not...

If an act of creation was required to bring the universe into being, that act took place outside the universe and was performed by an entity outside the universe. This is premise 1.

BUT... Premise 2 *defines* the universe as "everything that exists".

The only logical conclusion is that your choice of god is not in the universe. Which, by your own definition, means it does not exist.

Did I miss anything?

SoRB

Yes, I do see what you're saying.

But I think here we see the importance of the distinction between "universe" and "physical universe". In 1 above I infer it to mean "physical universe" or "created universe" (that which had a beginning). Would you agree that the universe had a beginning?

...and in 2, if it's to include God, then more than just the physical universe because God is not part of the physical universe. He exists but does not have a beginning.

Now I wouldn't normally say God was part of the universe. But you make a fair point. If the universe is absolutely everything that exists, and if God exists then he is part of the universe according to that definition, which is the one I gave you.

Perhaps I should modify my definition in the light of the point you just made. For me the universe is everything that exists that has a beginning.

If you want to talk inclusively of EVERYTHING that exists, including the (physical) universe or creation AND God together then there may be a word for that, but I don't know it.

"If you want to talk inclusively of EVERYTHING that exists[...]there may be a word for that, but I don't know it. "

There is a word. It's "universe".

The problem arises when you decide to believe, for whatever superstitious reason you choose, that it's possible to be "outside" it. As soon as you decide that, "universe" no longer means "everything that exists", as you defined it, and starts to mean something more restricted.

But then you have another problem. What does your universe exist IN? Because if it isn't *everything*, it must logically be in/part of something larger. You then have to make up a word to describe that larger something. "Multiverse", say. You can then define that to mean "everything that exists, seriously, dude, I mean rilly - EVERYTHING".

But you've answered nothing. All you done, again, is move the question back a notch. Where did the multiverse come from? If the universe had to have a creator, so did your multiverse.

What's worse is that there is, by definition and even in principle, no way at all of ever confirming the existence of any of these wonderful structures you require. No way of ever looking outside our "physical" universe. So while your ideas make an interesting story, they're utterly useless for anything but entertainment.

"Universe" means "everything that exists". That definition is a good one. You need to think very, very carefully why you find it necessary to narrow that definition.

SoRB

Hmm.

In the beginning, God lived in heaven. But we looked through telescopes, and found only heavens. So the God became invisible.

God is all knowing and all powerful. But we invented physics, which proves there is no mechanism for this to be possible. Oh, then God must exist outside physics, but is still capable of having a physical influence.

OK then, where did God come from? How did such complexity and intelligence emerge from a huge fireball? Umm, he must have been there all along.

But...the big bang was the start of the entire universe wasn't it? Errr, yes, OK, hang on ... we can invent another, outside, non-physical universe for him to inhabit. One that is outside time. Yes ... that's it ... then he wouldn't be subject to the laws of cause and effect, and need not have a 'beginning'. And by definition no-one can ever disprove the existence of something that lives outside all-that-exists.

But if he is not subject to cause and effect, how did he cause our physical universe to exist? Err...

Is it just me, or this line of reasoning starting to appear slightly tenuous?

So what caused hte big bang?

Some possible answers:

What makes you think it was "caused"?

Given that by normal definitions, the big bang was the first event, and that the concept of "before" does not apply to it, what makes you think it is possible even in principle to discover the cause, if there was one?

What causes particles to have mass?
(This is a perfectly sensible question to ask about physics to which the answer is, perfectly reasonably, "nobody knows". "Nobody knows" is an acceptable answer to questions such as this one. Making up your answer based on funny feelings in your head is frowned upon...)

SoRB

Here's something I missed that's probably important:

"Would you agree that the universe had a beginning?"

No.

There is a singularity in time approximately 13.7 billion years ago. That does not necessarily constitute a "beginning", merely an event horizon beyond which we cannot see.

SoRB

Well it happened, didn't it?
Is there any example in science of something happening without something having caused it?

If we use a logarithmic scale, the half-line "t>0" gets replaced by a full real line: t=1 gets mapped to 0, t=0.1 to -1, t=0.01 to -2, etc.

Now we can consider that our time ("whatever happened after the Big Bang") can be represented by a half-line t>0. What is called Big Bang corresponds, loosely speaking, to what happens as t tends to 0.

If we replace now the half-line t>0 by a full real line as above, the "moment" of the Big Bang is rejected indefinitely to the left side. It exists as some sort of limit, if you wish - you can get as close as you like, but never reach it. If you use this model you visualise easier why "before the BB" doesn't make sense.

"

Well it happened, didn't it?
Is there any example in science of something happening without something having caused it?"

Good point.

Except... on that basis - what caused God?

SoRB

I think you're missing the point about the Universe being a ball when you say the centre of the Universe is the centre of the ball. We are on the outside of the ball and the ball is a representation of two dimensions with the third dimension being the fourth.
We can only go left, right, forwards and backwards on the ball but not up or down. Up and down in this representation is the fourth dimension (or fifth if you count time as the fourth).
Am I clear or am I just confusing you more. Maybe I can think about a better way to explain this.
Alternatively Stephen Hawkin mentions it very well in "A Breif Histroy of Time" is you want to try that.

<

Well it happened, didn't it?
Is there any example in science of something happening without something having caused it?>>

Science deals with things withing the universe (so far, anyway). The appearance of the universe doesn't *necessarily* have to have causes in the same way that things within it do.

"Am I clear or am I just confusing you more."

What's clear, PSB, as I've amply demonstrated in my last response to you, is that you don't have a grasp of even quite simple, easily checked facts about the real world. Your credibility is the problem, not your clarity.

While that remains a problem, no amount of wittering about balls or dimensions or appeals to authority will help. You simply come across as having no idea what you're talking about.

SoRB