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

Visit A413272. I wrote the page because i had visited a few pages about defining reality or time travel and realised how heated the debates got. thats the kind of interest people should have in the guide.

oops, well you get the idea....

Wow - you've chosen a weighty subject! You could easily write a million words and not cover it all.

This is really more of a general overview of the universe... Maybe it'd be worth focusing on one aspect - like an entry on Time.

A nice, readable article - change "inclose" to "enclose".

-Lentilla

I'd agree that you're biting off rather a lot here. I'd focus your article down onto multiverses (which is what it seems mostly to be). There are a lot of multiverse theories... a physicist by name of Deutsche (I think) is rather reknown in this field.

As for seeing infinite universes... well, a good analogy is a fractal. You can look at a fractal, knowing that (in theory) you're looking off into infinity, because a fractal is infinitely patterned. Escaping from space-time and looking at it from the 'outside'... well, relativity could have a few things to say about that.

I'd personally leave the 'if a tree falls in the woods'-type question to other folks... there are plenty of Schroedinger cats out there. I think your talk on planes is getting a bit speculative there.

Nice article, but it needs a bit more of construction - suddenly talking about planes and D&D (although it's cool ) is a bit out of place.

If you fix a bit of it, I'd give it my support to be edited (or at least meshed together with some other articles, like the drink list).

Not ready for editing yet I don't think. Needs more thought (and I agree less D&D - it loses the article credibility ).

A point about infinity (speaking as a mathematician), infinity isn't a number, its the limit of an unending sequence. It's fairly easy to show that there are different 'sized' infinities as well. Consider the natural (counting) numbers. That is an infinite series: 1,2,3,4,5,.. but between any two natural numbers there are a *finite* quantity of numbers. (eg. between 4 and 8 there are 3 numbers - the same holds for *any* two natural numbers.)

Now consider the real numbers (ie. numbers with decimal places). Again it is an infinite series - for any real number, you can think of a bigger one. However, between any two real numbers, you can find an infinite quantity of real numbers. Between 1 and 2, for example, is 1.5; between 1 and 1.5 is 1.25; between 1 and 1.25 is 1.125 etc etc...

Hence, the limit of the series of real numbers is a larger infinity than the limit of the series of natural numbers.

The idea can be carried forward to infinite numbers of planes in an infinite universe.

Wow, you've inspired me to (perhaps) write an article on infinity, if there isn't one already. Bring on the Hotel With Infinite Rooms!

OK, I've made a start at http://www.h2g2.com/A414523. It's not finished yet; it may well never be, I could be staring at it for an infinitely long time. (Joke.)

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'The Writing Workshop' to 'The Flea Market'.