Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: shelliebellie98632 on 06/11/2008 04:46:20
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For interesting thought. I have been playing at a theory for awhile now, and i have seen others with similar thoughts to this. Since we all are made of cells, who couldn't the Earth be considered a cell? Could dark matter be the universes blood? Why cant we find the end of the Universe? Could we be inside a huge lifeform doing jobs of working cells, creating and multiplying? For the purpose of sustaining this being? End when a cell can no longer multiply doesn't it die off. Like Mars maybe once a thriving planet/cell which has died!! Just wondering!!!
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I must admit, there have been times when this thought has crossed my mind.
The atoms we look at are universes, we are an atom within our universe, that too is an atom within a universe and so on and so forth.
But then I think it's a bit fanciful really.
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For interesting thought. I have been playing at a theory for awhile now, and i have seen others with similar thoughts to this. Since we all are made of cells, who couldn't the Earth be considered a cell? Could dark matter be the universes blood? Why cant we find the end of the Universe? Could we be inside a huge lifeform doing jobs of working cells, creating and multiplying? For the purpose of sustaining this being? End when a cell can no longer multiply doesn't it die off. Like Mars maybe once a thriving planet/cell which has died!! Just wondering!!!
To answer the easy question first - why can't we see the end of the universe?
There are several possible answers. The most obvious is that it's too far away, beyond our "horizon" (the limit of the visible universe). It could also be that the universe is infinite and hence has no end. A further possibility is that on the largest scale spacetime is curved enough that travelling far enough in a straight line while eventually return you to your point of origin.
The rest of your questions are in the realm of wild speculation, but let me nonetheless try to address them.
What is it you think we may be "creating and multiplying"? As far as I am aware the only objects in the universe that create anything are clouds of gas that coalesce to form galaxies, stars & planets. Stars, in their turn, produce the heavy elements. Planets create nothing except life, although we as yet know of only 1 life-bearing planet - our own.
As for Mars maybe having once been a "thriving planet" there is, as yet, no hard evidence of that. It may well have had surface water and an atmosphere - possibly even rudimentary life; but thriving? We shall have to wait & see.
And what about planets that could not possibly have been "thriving"? I refer to Mercury & Venus in particular.
I think a lot of this kind of speculation springs from the old view of the atom as being like a solar system; with electrons in nice orbits around the nucleus like planets orbiting a star. It was thought that the macrocosm and the microcosm were essentially the same but on vastly different scales. This gave rise to the thought that solar systems were possibly atoms inside an even larger object. We now know this to be wrong. The microcosm and the macrocosm have been shown to be very different.
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I think a lot of this kind of speculation springs from the old view of the atom as being like a solar system; with electrons in nice orbits around the nucleus like planets orbiting a star. It was thought that the macrocosm and the microcosm were essentially the same but on vastly different scales. This gave rise to the thought that solar systems were possibly atoms inside an even larger object. We now know this to be wrong. The microcosm and the macrocosm have been shown to be very different.
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I was gonna say that. The view of the atom as like a little solar system is a common one created by those little models of the atom we have all seen, but this is only a representation of the atom, arranged in a convenient way.
To get back to the main topic, while I feel that there is an argument for seeing the universe as interconnected, and extrapolating outwards from that to view it as an organism, I feel that viewpoint is more a philosophical than a scientific one. After all, the extension of that is to believe that the stars and planets somehow influence our lives, in other words, astrology. And we don't believe in that, do we? (Do we? I'm assuming most people on a science website don't.)
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rhade - I have had a natal chart compiled by an astrologer who knew nothing about me. It described me almost to a T - and not in ambiguous language. Some of it was very precise.
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Astrological predictions do not have to be ambiguous to be believed, flattery will usually suffice...
The following is our 13 point guide to cold reading - Study them well, then amaze your friends with your new found psychic powers!
1. Remember that the key ingredient of a successful character reading is confidence.
If you look and act as if you believe in what you are doing, you will be able to sell even a bad reading to most subjects. One danger of playing the role of reader is that you may actually begin to believe that you really are divining your subject's true character!
2. Make creative use of the latest statistical abstracts, polls and surveys.
These can provide you with much information about what various subclasses in our society believe, do, want , worry about etc. For example, if you can ascertain a subject's place of origin, educational level, and his/her parents' religion and vocations, you have gained information which should allow you to predict with high probability his/her voting preferences and attitudes to many subjects.
3. Set the stage for your reading.
Profess a modesty about your talents. Make no excessive claims. You will then catch your subject off guard. You are not challenging them to a battle of wits - You can read his/her character, whether he/she believes you or not.
4. Gain the subject's cooperation in advance.
Emphasise that the success of the reading depends as much on the subject's cooperation as on your efforts. (After all, you imply, you already have a successful career at character reading - You are not on trial, your subject is!) State that due to difficulties of language and communication, you may not always convey the meaning you intend. In these cases, the subject must strive to fit the reading to his/her own life. You accomplish two valuable ends with this dodge - Firstly, you have an alibi in case the reading doesn't click; it's the subject's fault, not yours! Secondly, your subject will strive to fit your generalities to his/her specific life circumstances. Later, when the subject recalls the reading, you will be credited with much more detail than you actually provided! This is crucial. Your reading will only succeed to the degree that the subject is made an active participant in the reading. The good reader is the one who , deliberately or unwittingly, forces the subject to search his/her mind to make sense of your statements.
5. Use a gimmick, such as Tarot cards, crystal ball, palm reading etc.
Use of props serves two valuable purposes. Firstly, it lends atmosphere to the reading. Secondly, (and more importantly) it gives you time to formulate your next question/statement. Instead of just sitting there, thinking of something to say, you can be intently studying the cards /crystal ball etc. You may opt to hold hands with your subject - This will help you feel the subject's reactions to your statements. If you are using , say, palmistry (the reading of hands) it will help if you have studied some manuals, and have learned the terminology. This will allow you to more quickly zero in on your subject's chief concerns - "do you wish to concentrate on the heart line or the wealth line?"
6. Have a list of stock phrases at the tip of your tongue.
Even during a cold reading, a liberal sprinkling of stock phrases will add body to the reading and will help you fill in time while you formulate more precise characterisations. Use them to start your readings. Palmistry, tarot and other fortune telling manuals are a key source of good phrases.
7. Keep your eyes open!
Use your other senses as well. Size the subject up by observing his/her clothes, jewellery, mannerisms and speech. Even a crude classification based on these can provide the basis for a good reading. Also, watch carefully for your subject's response to your statements - You will soon learn when you are hitting the mark!
8. Use the technique of fishing.
This is simply a device to get the subject to tell you about his/herself. Then you rephrase what you have been told and feed it back to the subject.
One way of fishing is to phrase each statement as question, then wait for the reply. If the reply or reaction is positive, then you turn the statement into a positive assertion. Often the subject will respond by answering the implied question and then some. Later, the subject will forget that he/she was the source of the information! By making your statements into questions, you also force the subject to search his/her memory to retrieve specific instances to fit your general statement.
9. Learn to be a good listener.
During the course of a reading your client will be bursting to talk about incidents that are brought up. The good reader allows the client to talk at will. On one occasion I observed a tealeaf reader. The client actually spent 75% of the time talking. Afterward when I questioned the client about the reading she vehemently insisted that she had not uttered a single word during the course of the reading. The client praised the reader for having astutely told her what in fact she herself had spoken.
Another value of listening is that most clients that seek the services of a reader actually want someone to listen to their problems. In addition, many clients have already made up their minds about what choices they are going to make. They merely want support to carry out their decision.
10. Dramatise your reading.
Give back what little information you do have or pick up a little bit at a time. Make it seem more than it is. Build word pictures around each divulgence. Don't be afraid of hamming it up.
11. Always give the impression that you know more than you are saying.
The successful reader, like the family doctor, always acts as if he/she knows much more. Once you have persuaded the subject that you know one item of information that you couldn't possibly have known (through normal channels) the subject will assume that you know all! At this point, the subject will open up and confide in you.
12. Don't be afraid to flatter your subject at every opportunity.
An occasional subject will protest, but will still lap it up. In such cases, you can add, "You are always suspicious of those who flatter you. You just can't believe that someone will say something good about you without an ulterior motive".
13. Remember the Golden Rule - always tell the subject what he/she wants to hear!
http://www.skeptics.com.au/articles/coldread.htm
I have repeatedly seen posters and newspaper adverts for Psychic Fares:
if the organisers are really psychic why are advertisements necessary ?, surely telepathy would be much cheaper. [:)]
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RD - I'm aware of all that. I had my natal chart done by post. There was no flattery but it described my characteristics and personality very accurately.
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My Mrs was told by some twit fortune teller that she should avoid red vehicles for her safety.
Not a bad prediction considering at the time red was the most popular colour for cars and was the colour of all London buses, post office (GPO) vans, fire tenders and the most used colour of the visibal chasis of trucks...... I would guess better than 75% of vehicles on the road at the time were red, or had some red on them somewhere.
VISIBAL????? Burk, where did you learned Englishes???
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Anyway, we digress
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couldn't the Earth be considered a cell?...Could we be inside a huge lifeform doing jobs of working cells, creating and multiplying? For the purpose of sustaining this being?
This sounds a bit like the Gaia Hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis).
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The following is our 13 point guide to cold reading - Study them well, then amaze your friends with your new found psychic powers![SNIP]
That's a keeper.
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The situation proposed in the original question is a bit like the "turtles all the way down" statement about what is beneath the turtle, on which is standing the four elephants, on which rests a flat Earth.
Recursive and circular models are aesthetically pleasing - but that's all. There is no justification for such ideas really.
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When I was young and naive, I too had a postal reading done. It appeared pretty accurate. I don't believe it. RD is correct: the key to a good con is to tell the "mark" what he wants to hear. All grifters know this.
No disrespect intended to Dr. Beaver, who seems to be coming in for criticism here.
I seem to have taken this away from the original topic. My fault entirely, I apologise to shelliebellie98632
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In the end and beginning there is only consciousness, and the ordering of its impressions.
Maybe we are somewhat like Russian dolls where everything has a 'hidden' purpose.
But I think it's stranger than that, I don't think we're 'planned' at all.
Some people think that this universe we live in could be a 'white hole'.
That one could think of as as a time reversal of a black one:)
A black hole has its 'singularity' waiting for it at some distant point in the future when it will break down into 'something strange' due to all that mass it has drawn in.
A white hole though, is spewing out its mass, acting the reversal of a black one, and has its 'singularity' already done at some distant time in the past.
Both attracts mass though but the white hole 'runs away' while the black one wellcomes it.
I'm not sure how that would work but I know that, seen from the inside of a black hole spacetime might be infinite, even though we observing can orbit it from the outside of the event horizon.
So maybe the same rules a white hole?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hole
A description of how a gravity well/black hole can be seen as infinite (seen from the inside)
http://www.mariner.connectfree.co.uk/Gravity/Basic_gravity/basic_gravity.html
And for how space 'bends' to gravity you can read this too.
http://members.cox.net/jhaldenwang/black_hole.htm
Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity
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rhade - as I said, I wasn't told what I want to hear. It was a bit too close to the truth for that.
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One of the problems with astrology is that the stars have moved since ancient times, so if they really could tell us something about our lives, we should all be reading the chart for the sign previous to what we are reading. In the end, Dr. Beaver, it is entirely up to you if you choose to believe this stuff. Do you not, however, agree that finding scientific support, as opposed to anecdotal evidence, is difficult?
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Do you not, however, agree that finding scientific support, as opposed to anecdotal evidence, is difficult?
Indeed, I won't argue with that. I am just relating a personal experience.
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There are seasonal trends in various characteristics, e.g. gender and handedness and illness ...
As predicted, the proportion of left-handed students who were born during the period March-July, 43.9%, was found to be significantly higher than the corresponding proportion of right-handed students, 33.4%...
There is also widespread evidence of a relation between season of birth and incidence of schizophrenia;
for example, Verdoux, Takei, de Saint-Mathurin et al. (1997) reported that the incidence peaks for April births (with an elevation of 13%).
http://www.maths.otago.ac.nz/home/downloads/stat412/Martin_and_Jones_1999.pdf
So if you are told a persons birthday then it is possible to successfully predict (on average) certain characteristics.
Astrology not required.
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Or you could say astrology got there first. It depends on your bias.