The infinite space of the Universe

My bad, i forgot you were smarter than the scientists at NASA(them poor souls had the nerve to claim that the universe is flat). If you are that smart as you think you are, you'd be able to answer a very simple question - so, what is absolute vacuum in physical terms?Hint - empty 3d space would not be a good answer.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

Absolute vacuum is space completely devoid of particles. This of course is not possible, so absolute vacuum does not exist(there will always be massless wave-like particles emerging and disappearing). But this causes a paradox as nothing/nothingness does not exist as well. It's a man-made concept. It is easier in casual conversation to say that an empty cup has nothing in it, yet we know when we look deeper that the cup is full of air molecules. In essence a black hole is a nothing because it shatters our dimension and so it could perhaps be the heart of nothingness. I would say nothing(absolute vacuum) does exist, but perhaps only in the infinity of a black hole.

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In essence a black hole is a nothing because it shatters our dimension and so it could perhaps be the heart of nothingness. I would say nothing(absolute vacuum) does exist, but perhaps only in the infinity of a black hole.

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Nope. Black Holes have mass.

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The fact that black holes do have mass does not rule out the possibility that they constitute true "nothingness".

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What's wrong with absolute nothingness being an impossibility? How is it a "paradox"?

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If the word nothingness does not signify anything meaningful, then there is no need for such a word. However, the word can be found in every dictionary and that is a paradox. Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

So, are you really saying that space will bend the bar and weld it to the beginning? What if I travel a distance equivalent to 80 billion light years? Am I going to be stretched out and bent back all across the universe to where my journey started?Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

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and weld it to the beginning?
  —Agobot

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Weld? No, of coures not. Where does this come from?
  —cavediver

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You evade answering my question - how do the beginning and end of the bar meet?

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What if I travel a distance equivalent to 80 billion light years? Am I going to be stretched out and bent back all across the universe to where my journey started?
  —Agobot

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Yes, in exactly the same way that if you travel 21599 miles around the Earth, you will be stretched out and bent back all across the Earth to where your journey began.
  —cavediver

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If i take on a random journey around the earth, the last thing that could be expected is that i'd be returning(by chance) in exactly the same spot as where my journey started. Or did you mean to say that if i travel a distance of 80 billion light years, at some point i'd be returning(in a random direction) and not moving forward in space?Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

Got what you mean. thanks

I would tend to agree that we don't know the answers to the most vital questions: what we are and why we are here on this tiny speck in the universe called earth, where we came from, where the universe came from, what life is, what the universe is, what life is, etc. It's depressing how small, insignificant, unaware and oblivious we are in the grand scheme of things in the universe with our puny minds and our thirst for knowledge. What's more depressing is that so far there has been no indication of an existence of god, and this is not only depressing, it's frightening how alone we are by ourselves in this most indifferent thing we call nature.

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Does someone need a hug? Why do you need a God? Do you think you are owed something special like eternal life simply for the random act of being born? Maybe you hold yourself in too high of a regard in comparison to the rest of the animal kingdom? Try smoking some pot, or take some LSD, this should help

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I don't need a god but life and the universe don't make a millionth of a percent sense. Their existence just don't make ANY sense, whatsoever. Everything is so pointless, yet everything is real and existing, it's frightening...

If the space is infinite we'll be hitting a wall in our quest for knowledge as we don't know what infinite is, since we have never seen anything that is infinte. If space is finite, we'll have to ask what's outside of it? Nothingness? Cannot be as nothingness does not exist. But being 3d beings we cannot see anything that might be more-dimensional(outside our 3d universe) nor can we even begin to grasp the idea of 5 or 6 dimensional space and what it's supposed to be. Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

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I don't need a god but life and the universe don't make a millionth of a percent sense. Their existence just don't make ANY sense, whatsoever. Everything is so pointless, yet everything is real and existing, it's frightening...
  —Agobot

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This is a human perspective, to the Universe YOU don't make sense. There's a great book written by the Dalai Lama called, "The Universe in a single Atom", it may be a good read for you.
  —onifre

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From our human perspective, I can see only one way that the universe would make sense. It would be if life was an illusion and we were all actors in a running movie. But there's also the possibilty that you might be right - life and the universe could just exist for absolutely no reason.

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One thing I have wondered is, "Why would the universe even have to have a reason for existing?"

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What a terrible waste on cosmic scales it would be, if the universe served no purpose. But let's stick to our logic - it hasn't failed us so far, so there is no reason to believe it will in the future. Logic tells us "there's got to be a reason", we're just too feeble minded to know.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

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If there was no purpose then there couldn't be any "waste".

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Huh? Waste means to "To use, consume, spend, or expend thoughtlessly or carelessly" which would turn your sentence into
"If there was no purpose then there IS waste". Or initially, what you wanted to say was "If there is no logic, then there couldn't be any waste".Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

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Considering your statements got me to thinking. Would there be a universe if there were no people?
  —Libmr2bs

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There is a pretty good fossil record that says there had been life and a universe prior to our arrival. It is also a pretty heavy blow to the religeous dogma of an early universe and man being the purpose of the universe.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

The bar can be perfectly straight and yet bend around the universe. That's because of the distance that the bar has to travel - probably 999 billion trillion miles. You cannot claim straightness at such lenghts, what would seem perfectly straight for 10, 15 or 1000 miles will not be straight after 110 billion trillion miles. This of course is valid only if we assume a spherical shaped universe, not a flat one(hotly contested topic among cosmologists, and the answer you'll get depends on who you'll ask).
However, the bar may start to turn around but there is no property of space that will make the end come back to the begginning. It can only happen on the surface of the earth, but since galaxies are not spread out only on the "surface" of the universe, there is no way the bar will rejoin itself. We are within a sphere(our universe), and not onto the sphere's surface.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

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Not to take anything away from our dear departed Douglas, but space - even if infinite - is really, really small
  —cavediver

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How can something infinite be small at the same time? Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.