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

Hello, Frumious Bandersnatch. The rest of this posting is written under the assumption that you are the same person as Hoovooloo. If you aren't, let me know, but if you are, please answer.

Is it true that the universe is, or t least may be larger than the observable universe. In other words, is the universe expandin fast enough that parts of it are moving away from us at faster than the speed of light?

I don't supppose you could give me a link to support your answer--I'm trying to settle a dispute with toxxin on the "God-Fact or Fiction" thread.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Ooh. Interesting question. First of all, yes, I am indeed the p**s-artist formerly known as Hoovooloo.

Next, some advice - don't waste too much energy on toxxin. If disagreeing with him is ever anything but fun, stop. He is by most definitions a troll, in my experience.

Anyway, moving on to the substantive point...

Tricky. First of all, nothing can be moving away from us faster than the light it emits or reflects, unless general relativity, the single most successful theory in physics, has something fundamentally wrong with it that a century of experimental evidence has failed to spot.

The problem here is in many ways your definition of the word "universe".

The usual definition is "everything that is", or more dictionarily, "the aggregate of all existing matter, energy and space". Fine.

But how do you confirm the existence of something? By observing it, directly or indirectly. For instance, we know the galaxy has a dense centre. We can't SEE it, there's too much dust in the way, but we can observe it by other means.

But let's assume that the universe has a finite lifetime - say 30 billion years, of which we've had about half. And lets further say that there's *something*, something REALLY bright - an exploding cluster of galaxies say - but that cluster is 20 billion light years away. It doesn't matter how fast it is moving - the light from it is travelling at the universal speed limit, c. And it's going to take 20 billion years to get here. But... the universe only has 15 billion years left. So this object is unobservable, EVEN IN PRINCIPLE.

Nothing about it, its gravity, its light, nothing will ever or can ever reach us here in the lifetime of our universe. In what sense, then, can it be considered to be part of our universe? It can't. Our universe consists of everything that exists - and the very existence of this object is unconfirmable by ANY means in this universe, so therefore - it isn't IN this universe.

Of course the problem with that is you've got to ask yourself "well, where the hell did it COME from?". And the answer is - your mind! You made it up. It has existence there, as an idea. But nothing you can do can confirm or deny any type of "existence" outside your mind. (sound familiar?)

But there's a physical objection, too. If the matter in the object had been involved in the big bang, then there's no way in the 15 billion years available to it that it could have got that far away. If it started out in the same stupidly, unimaginably dense collection of matter and energy that was the whole universe 15 billion years ago, in order to get 20 billion light years away by now it would have had to go faster than light at some point, and zis is verboten. So there's a sound physical objection to there being objects outside the observable universe.

However, there's even more. The problem with the "observable universe" is that the majority of it is anything but observable. As Slartibartfast once said, the interesting thing about space is how dull it is. There's so much of it and so little in it. The only bits of the universe we're really able to observe are those bits which happen to conveniently clump together enough to give off seriously huge amounts of energy, and the further away you get the more energy they have to be giving off before we can notice them. The problem being, the further away they get, the further back in TIME we're looking

Of course, everytime you look at the sky, you're looking into the past. The moon you see is not the moon as it is now, it's the moon as it look 3 seconds ago. The sun you see is the sun from eight minutes ago. Look at the brightest star in the sky, and it what you're seeing tonight is how it looked in about April 1995. And look at the Andromeda galaxy M31, and what you'll be seeing is an image of how it looked when humans were four foot apes who'd just decided on a career on the plains rather than the trees.

, and the further back you go, the less clumping there was going on.

So the nearer you get to the boundary of the observable universe, the less there is to see - you're literally looking back in time to when things were even duller than they are now.

The OBSERVABLE universe can't expand faster than light, and since observability in principle defines what's in the universe and what isn't, neither is the universe.

Hope that helped.

I'll try and dig a couple of links.

FB

http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2000-02/msg0021660.html

http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2002-01/msg0038429.html

Try those.

Oh? Someone else suffering from toxxic shock? Maybe I should start a 12-step support group for them!

B

"Next, some advice - don't waste too much energy on toxxin. If disagreeing with him is ever anything but fun, stop. He is by most definitions a troll, in my experience."

I wouldn't bother, except that it is a thread with so many subscribers that I don't want him to give everyone on H2G2 the wrong idea, if he is indeed wrong.

"Nothing about it, its gravity, its light, nothing will ever or can ever reach us here in the lifetime of our universe. In what sense, then, can it be considered to be part of our universe? It can't. Our universe consists of everything that exists - and the very existence of this object is unconfirmable by ANY means in this universe, so therefore - it isn't IN this universe."

Depends on the definition of universe. I was defining the universe as evetrything produced by the same big bang that produced our universe.

"But there's a physical objection, too. If the matter in the object had been involved in the big bang, then there's no way in the 15 billion years available to it that it could have got that far away. If it started out in the same stupidly, unimaginably dense collection of matter and energy that was the whole universe 15 billion years ago, in order to get 20 billion light years away by now it would have had to go faster than light at some point, and zis is verboten. So there's a sound physical objection to there being objects outside the observable universe."

THat's what I'm not so sure of. I'm pretty sure that I've read a couple of articles in the magazine Scientific American (if you don't konw what that is, its a magazine in the US that publishes articles by scientists about their areas of research intended for people with a good background in science, but not in the specific area of the article. Although it isn't exactly a peer-reviewed journal, its articles can generally be trusted more than those in a newspaper.) to the effect thatthere are parts of the universe receeding from us faster than light, but it doesn't violate relativity because they can never be observed in any area that they are receeding from faster than light (conversely, we are receeding faster than light from them, and they can never observe us.

Thanks for the help. I'll get back to you if I can figure out annything to say that won't be little more than meaningless dribble.

hi Ben,

You are so funny - offering a twelve-step programme for toxxic-shock. I decided to go 'cold turkey' and so about three weeks ago I finally left the God-fact or fiction thread. What a relief, to be honest. But my pal Fnord is still battling it out with the Toxxic Avenger so I told him to come and have a look at this thread. To get another viewpoint on the guy. Just so he knows who and what he is dealing with.

btw, FB, Alji says (he stopped by here too) that the non-existence of proof is not proof of non-existence. Alji stopped by because I had posted this thread on Fnord's page. And I am here, FB, because as you know, I am your 'stalker'!

Not really, of course. But I have been following your battle with the powers that beebeecee. Just so you know, if it matters, I am very much on your side in this. But I have nothing intelligent to add to what others are saying in your defense on these various threads. I do know it is not only in 'your defense' but in the defense of keeping this forum open and as uncensored as possible. And I wish all of you much luck in this endeavour.

az

a frumious bandersnatch is WHAT exactly?

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch."

Lewis Carroll, some time around 1855.

See also Larry Niven's "Known Space" sf, early 1970s.

And a famously promised but never completed 8 bit home computer game circa 1984.

ah, okay then.

I had the notion that the Frumious Bandersnatch might have been a Dr. Suess character . . . (don't hit me!)

az

That's probably the least wrong guess you could have made.

When it comes to nonsense verse, there's Carroll, there's Seuss, there's Edward Lear, and there's everybody else - so Seuss was close!

Well, I also did consider the Snark - which is also Lewis Carroll, isn't it? But the silly name made me think of Dr. Seuss.

It's a magical animal then? Or a bird?

I preferred Hoovooloo, to be honest.

az

My Annotated Alice says this:

Frumious - "... in those frumious jaws," Snark, Fit 7, verse 5. In the Snark's preface Carrol writes: For instance, take the two words 'fuming' and 'furious'. Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards 'fuming' you will say 'fuming-furious', if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards ' furious,' you will say 'furious-fuming'; but if you hae that rarest of gifts, a prefectly balanced mind, [Hoo? Hah!] you will say 'frumious.'

The Bandersnatch is mentioned in the Snark Fit 7, verses 3, 4 and 5.

In chapter VII of Alice through the looking-glass Alice says: "Would you - be good enoughtg - " Alice panted out, after runnign a little further, "to stop a minute - just to get - one's breath again?" "I am good enough," the king said, "only I am not strong enought. You see, a minute goes by so fearfully quick. You might as well try to stop a Bandersnatch!"

So there you are - a bit of nonsence which is furious, fuming and which cannot be stopped!

Did you know all that Hoo, or was it serendipitous?

Ben

Sorry about the typos - I can touch type - but obviously not tonight.

B

Trivia: Can anyone (other than the Frumious Bandersnatch) tell me what book that's from, and any words from the *complete* poem that are now common in English, but were invented in the poem. I can only think of one, but there are probably more.

Jabberwocky, I think, is from Alice In Wonderland.

But I hadn't remembered the frumious bandersnatch from that poem.

buenas noches,
az

It's not from Alice in Wonderland, but that's a good guess.

That's mean, Inverted Solipsist.

I confess when I was looking it up in my Annotated Alice, I had to guess where I would find it. I did find it where I was expecting to, but I wasn't certain.

B

I can only think of two, unless you count "vorpal blade", which is likely only in what could be called common use amongst the RPG community

Wabe - though that may be common family usage rather than common common usage, becasue - bizare family that we were - we had one.

Whiffling - though Carrol didn't coin it, so it doesn't count, I gues

Ah! Got it!

Burbled!

"If you take the three verbs '*b*leat,' 'm*ur*mer,' and 'war*ble*,' and select the bits I have underlined [starred] it certainly makes 'burble': though I am afraid I can't distinctly remember having made it in that way" - [Carroll in a private letter]. The word (apparently a combination of 'burst' and 'bubble') had long been used in England a s a varient of 'bubble' (eg the burbling brook) as well as a word meaning to 'to perplex, cofuse or muddle' ('His life fallen into a horribly burbled state', the OED quotes from an 1882 letter of Mrs Carlyle's).

All of the above from the Annotated Alice - a wonderful book.

B

Oh, and "chortled". Which Carrol did coin, apparently. And "galumphing" come to that.

It would be interesting to know who was the greater contributer to the English language, Carroll or Shakespeare.

I know Shakespeare coined a huge number of words, but then he had 30+ plays to do so.

Carroll presumably contributed fewer words, but did so with two novella sized books and a medium length poem.

Ben

I mis-read your trivia thingy, Inverted One, being half-asleep and in amazing back pain at the time. Just a handy excuse, of course, as am always mis-reading stuff. Ah well, no pasa nada.

az
(ouch - still hurts)