Quote:
Originally Posted by The Third Man
That we can see 13.7-15 Billion years into the past, which sets our perception of the age of the universe.
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Not necessarily. you must differ between two terms that astronomers differ between, too: the "universe", and the "observable universe". But every-day-language usually refers to the observable universe when only the term "universe" is used. I could very well be that the universe is bigger than we know, that there is something beyond the range to which we can see, or that indeed we need to think of multiverses: a high number of universes coexisting (I personally think this is likely, since it just would follow a trend in the way how our observable universe is structured hierarchically: star systems -> galaxies -> local groups of galaxies -> supercluster of local groups -> a web-like structure formed arouind huge voids by superclusters with 100 billion galaxies, this is our current image of the observable universe. In the observable universe we can look only as far away as the universe is old, due to the link of time and lightspeed: we cannot see light from a place that is more distant in lightyears than the light has had time in years to travel. This defines what we call the border of the (expanding) universe.
The Big Bang is just a model, a theory, because for the most it explains a greater amount of known info and observations, than other theories do. But a theory is only a shadowbox into which we put the poieces of our ideas and observbations accoridng to the system we see fit. If the box does not meet our needs or becomes too small, we chnage it for another that suits our needs better. The Big Bang theory has problems for me. It does not explain how and
why (!) there should have been nothing, and suddenly somethign started to be. How could this be? Why even should this be? why isn't there just a big "nothingness" anymore? And if there is "something" that is expanding, what is beyond the border of this "something"? There must be something, else thinking of a borderline between something and nothing makes no sense. and a border there seems to be, else the universe would be unlimited in size (another hard to grab conception). However, I tend to beolieve that when we say "border of the universe", in fact we only talk about the border, the limits of our knoweldge about the existence of all "what is".
I cannot separate astronomy from spirituality, I never could. And the fact that not only we humans, but everything, all the universe as we are able to perceive it, is
existing, is nothing but an unexplained and probably unexplainable wonder. We are irrelevant to the universe, that small we are. But here we sit, being able to use our brain to at least asking questions and reflecting about ourselves and this giant thing around us, and about the unsolved question of our existence, reaching out for what is so huge in dimension that it renders us completely unimportant by its own majestic size - and nevertheless we are capable to think in a language by whose terms (mathematics) what is essentially infinity becomes describable in finite terms. We might be unimportant to the universe, but neverthless this is what also forms our greatness - without which the universe maybe would not be what it is. If there is no witness who would hear the tree in the forest falling, then the fall is noiseless.
And the other qurstion: how many others witnesses there are, and what is their way of realsing the fall of trees?