[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

Entropy, the decline in useful energy of a system, is a tireless process that is active everywhere, so in order for there to be meaningful life support systems they must either be able to defeat entropy, or regenerate conditions for life over and over again. In fact, entropy and regeneration are what I would call continual protagonists in the processes of the infinite and eternal universe where I believe that life is and always has been present.




158005,

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

As the thread topic implies, "If there was one Big Bang, why not multiple ...?", my vote is for multiple big bangs. If that is the case, we are not in an expanding universe, we are in an infinite universe that appears to be expanding from our position and point of view in it. I would suggest that the concept of an expanding universe be superseded by the concept of an infinite and eternal, ever-changing, multiple big bang universe.


158380,158533,158625,

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

... we are not in an expanding universe, we are in ... an infinite and eternal, ever-changing, multiple big bang universe.

The universe right around us appears to be expanding because that space is within our local arena of space which is associated with our own recent (17 billion years ago maybe) Big Bang event, but that particular Big Bang is just one insignificant example in an infinite number of similar big bang type events that have always been occurring across all space and time.




158640,

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

Gravity accumulates and compresses matter, and the compression eventually reaches a natural limit beyond which matter cannot be further compressed, and when that limit is reached ... BANG! It BANGS when the accumulated crunch of matter can no longer resist the growing gravitational compression and the atoms comprising that matter fail to be able to maintain their necessary space. As the atomic forces fail, the local crunch violently collapses, and the collapse "bounces" into an expanding shock wave that encompasses the entire arena of space and beyond. These Bangs have been occurring here and there, now and then, throughout the infinite history of the universe, IMHO .




158654,

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

The way that gravity accumulates matter is through a process characterized by the fact that matter both absorbes and emits gravitational wave energy.

It absorbs, and thus accumulates gravitational wave energy as a result of matter being swirled into the growing crunch and bringing with it additional gravitational capacity to attract more and more nearby matter. You might think that such a circumstance would eventually result in all of the matter in the universe accumulating into one final crunch, ... but no. You can't accumulate an infinite amount of matter into a single final Big Crunch; the crunch will collapse and bang long before the available supply of surrounding matter gets captured by the growing crunch.


That is why I say that there would be a potentially infinite number of accumulating crunches going on at the same time, here and there, if you consider the vastness of the infinite space of an endless universe filled with an infinite amount of matter, crunching and banging its way through eternity.



158802,

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

Gravity accumulates and compresses matter, and the compression eventually reaches a natural limit beyond which matter cannot be further compressed, and when that limit is reached ... BANG!

The limit of matter compression is probably something like a neutron star, and when that limit is exceeded, it collapses, which does indeed make a bang, but mostly it just collapses into a black hole, which (via tidal forces) pulls matter back apart and does not compress it further.

So this is hardly going to cause any sort of big bang. Just a little one. A large star running out of fuel will make a far larger bang (a supernova), which also is an entirely different thing than the big bang which isn't something that occurs at a location in space like actual bangs.

It BANGS when the accumulated crunch of matter can no longer resist the growing gravitational compression and the atoms comprising that matter fail to be able to maintain their necessary space.

If you squeeze matter, it collapses, not bangs outwards, which requires energy from somewhere. Matter (atoms say) indeed cannot resist that sort of pressure, and the light electrons tend to be pushed to the surface, and the protons to the center, making a sort of huge atom with a nucleus of many solar masses. In a way, this is a form of matter.

As the atomic forces fail, the local crunch violently collapses, and the collapse "bounces" into an expanding shock wave that encompasses the entire arena of space and beyond.

Yes, but again, this shock wave has far less radiated energy than a supernova.

These Bangs have been occurring here and there, now and then, throughout the infinite history of the universe

That they have. We've record of many of them, but most are too faint to see.

The way that gravity accumulates matter is through a process characterized by the fact that matter both absorbes and emits gravitational wave energy.

This is incorrect. Gravitational wave energy is radiation, and mass does not have this kind of energy since mass does not move at c.
It's kind of like asserting that a light bulb accumulates light energy, when in fact it holds none at all, and it is only externally supplied electrical energy that gets converted to light and radiated away, forever lost, just like gravitational wave energy. Very little (far less than 1%) of this energy is eventually reabsorbed by other matter somewhere and converted to some other form of energy.

Thank you for the comments.  I post out here "On the lighter side" because my off-beat ideas are not of the "generally accepted" variety, but they sometimes touch on topics where strange ideas still raise eyebrows since "settled science" still has chapters to be written. Somehow I use that logic to see a door ajar for those of us who throw our off-beat ideas against the walls of this far-side sub-forum to see if anything sparks a discussion.


159305,159353,

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

One thing that doesn't seem obvious to a layman looking out at the night sky is that on a scale relative to the vastness of the infinite universe, the visible universe is tiny, a mere spec of its vast entirety. Light waves, light energy, the red shift, blue shift, and visible expansion are not readily recognized. Knowing about, and understanding them has always kept scientists busy, and the work is far from done; I suppose it will never be complete, especially if "completion" requires a general consensus.

Nevertheless, if you base your view on what man can observe from Earth and nearby space, which is a tiny portion of what the universe really is, and assuming that as a whole it is infinite, we will continue to learn more as we peer deeper and deeper into space and into the past.

That brings to mind The Sad Tale of Hsi and Ho, a Chinese myth I recently came across in a book of Strange Stories, Amazing Facts . Their fate, at the hands of the Emperor of China, for not predicting the eclipse, as the story goes, is memorialized in the poem:


Here lie the bodies of Hsi and Ho,
Whose fate, though sad, was visible:
Being killed  because they did not spy
Th' eclipse which was invisible.


159375,159391,

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

Nevertheless, if you base your view on what man can observe from Earth and nearby space, which is a tiny portion of what the universe really is, and assuming that as a whole it is infinite, we will continue to learn more as we peer deeper and deeper into space and into the past.

We already peer close to the edge of the visible universe (the CMB, which has been measured since 75 years ago. No deeper view with any telescope has peered further than that.

Still, you mention that we only see this tiny spec of the universe, which is true. Maybe the cosmological principle is wrong, and it only looks like what we see locally and it looks different elsewhere. Maybe the rules are different far away, or the mass density changes or something. Don't know how that might help with your ideas.

I would be disappointed and disillusioned if the rules were not the same everywhere, but not surprised.

Pick a drop of water out of the ocean to examine it under a microscope and what are the chances that in that drop, there is a good representation of the entire ocean? The larger the sample, the better the chances, but there is always room for doubt when sampling is employed. But what choice do we have?




159431,

[JLindgaard]

One thing that doesn't seem obvious to a layman looking out at the night sky is that on a scale relative to the vastness of the infinite universe, the visible universe is tiny, a mere spec of its vast entirety. Light waves, light energy, the red shift, blue shift, and visible expansion are not readily recognized. Knowing about, and understanding them has always kept scientists busy, and the work is far from done; I suppose it will never be complete, especially if "completion" requires a general consensus.

Nevertheless, if you base your view on what man can observe from Earth and nearby space, which is a tiny portion of what the universe really is, and assuming that as a whole it is infinite, we will continue to learn more as we peer deeper and deeper into space and into the past.

That brings to mind The Sad Tale of Hsi and Ho, a Chinese myth I recently came across in a book of Strange Stories, Amazing Facts . Their fate, at the hands of the Emperor of China, for not predicting the eclipse, as the story goes, is memorialized in the poem:


Here lie the bodies of Hsi and Ho,
Whose fate, though sad, was visible:
Being killed  because they did not spy
Th' eclipse which was invisible.


159375,159391,

 And when the background cosmological radiation is observed that defines the limits of our universe, what is beyond that? If we cannot understand the finite which is our universe then how how we understand that which is infinite?

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

One thing that doesn't seem obvious to a layman looking out at the night sky is that on a scale relative to the vastness of the infinite universe, the visible universe is tiny, a mere spec of its vast entirety. Light waves, light energy, the red shift, blue shift, and visible expansion are not readily recognized. Knowing about, and understanding them has always kept scientists busy, and the work is far from done; I suppose it will never be complete, especially if "completion" requires a general consensus.

Nevertheless, if you base your view on what man can observe from Earth and nearby space, which is a tiny portion of what the universe really is, and assuming that as a whole it is infinite, we will continue to learn more as we peer deeper and deeper into space and into the past.

That brings to mind The Sad Tale of Hsi and Ho, a Chinese myth I recently came across in a book of Strange Stories, Amazing Facts . Their fate, at the hands of the Emperor of China, for not predicting the eclipse, as the story goes, is memorialized in the poem:


Here lie the bodies of Hsi and Ho,
Whose fate, though sad, was visible:
Being killed  because they did not spy
Th' eclipse which was invisible.


159375,159391,

 And when the background cosmological radiation is observed that defines the limits of our universe, what is beyond that? If we cannot understand the finite which is our universe then how how we understand that which is infinite?

My view is that the CMBR fills all space, and I suggest that space is infinite, so that would make the CMBR infinite as well.

I agree that "infinite" can be a hard concept to grasp, let alone being hard to come to a consensus on with others.




159700,

[GaryBrownIE]

So, "infinite" is just impossible to "achieve". This assertion was given to me by my college professor.

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

So, "infinite" is just impossible to "achieve". This assertion was given to me by my college professor.

I can see his point ... Starting from a point in space and time, it is impossible to travel an infinite distance, i.e. anything finite is almost nothing, almost nowhere, almost never relative to the infinite.


Nevertheless, the three infinities of space, time, and energy are still hard to refute.




159793,

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

I'm just trying to figure out the nature of the background that would result from an infinite history of big bangs occurring here and there, now and then across that infinity of space. What affect would a new local Big Bang have on the local vicinity background, and could the cosmic ray bursts be indications of distant big bangs?




159862,

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

Friday, October 21, 2022: I think tonight might be a good night to see shooting stars. They say to look to the Southwest as debris from Halley's comet burns up as it enters Earth's atmosphere.


160664,160770,160798,

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

The period often referred to as "prehistory" is generally characterized as a period before writing emerged among humans on Earth.


If you subscribe to the "eternal universe" concept, and the belief that intelligent life has always existed here and there, now and then, throughout the infinity of time and space, then the concept of "the one and only universe" fits that grand scenario. "One universe" is a possibility that is out there for anyone to contemplate, and I consider it a "given" in my attempts to expound on such issues; no need for a multiverse that requires segmentation of the "one grand universe, infinite and eternal" concept, or for multiple starts here and there.


In a "one and only grand universe" philosophy, the terms "infinite" and "eternal" apply to a universe without a beginning and without any logical end, and where anything that is possible seems to be a certainty to have occurred somewhere, sometime. In line with that kind of thinking, on a universal scale, there really would be no universal prehistory and no grand beginning ever; think "always existed".


In vast places across space that at present seem to be without intelligent beings to record the passing of history, the mere potential for the invasion of intelligence coming from both near and far, and occupying those vacant places, are eventual likelihoods in the grand scheme of things. They will likely host life that either evolves to intelligence, or where life is seeded by the visit of living creatures that have endured and thrived, to expand into distant places with life that has the potential to get a foothold, and evolve.




160817,160854,

[Bored chemist]

If there's ever a second big bang, will we know about it?
As far as I can tell, if it's far away we won't know about it and if it's near, it will destroy us before we can see it.

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

If there's ever a second big bang, will we know about it?
As far as I can tell, if it's far away we won't know about it and if it's near, it will destroy us before we can see it.

In terms of the infinite universe, to me near and far are relative terms. "Near" might be some event occurring within our lifetime that would have noticeable effects to us on Earth, like a nearby cosmic ray burst could have, and far might be events that would happen so far away, that even with light from it traveling for a lifetime, it would not have reached us yet from its origin. So I might maintain that distant events within the last 100 years would be classified as near, while over 100 light years away I would consider to be far, ... just a suggested parameter.

Of course, light from distant sources may have been traversing space "forever" and may become so defused that, though its photons may reach us, they could become so defused as to be indistinguishable from the cosmic background.

But "distance" on a universal scale can even be considered infinite, and an event happening an infinite distance from Earth could never be detected. I think there is an oxymoron in there somewhere .

Nevertheless, if that sounds like a fair description of a distant event, your concept of the size of the universe would determine if it allows for infinite timeframes. Mine does.




160873,

[Bored chemist]

In an expanding universe, it's possible for something to happen that will never be observed from here because it will effectively be moving from us at "more than the speed of light".
I that case, a second BB will not matter to us.
On the other hand, if it's closer than that cut off then it will "hit" us at the speed of light and I can't see anything good happening to us as a consequence.

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

In an expanding universe, it's possible for something to happen that will never be observed from here because it will effectively be moving from us at "more than the speed of light".
I that case, a second BB will not matter to us.
On the other hand, if it's closer than that cut off then it will "hit" us at the speed of light and I can't see anything good happening to us as a consequence.

That sounds possibly right .

If you follow the "thinking" that I post about (shrug, no telling what reality is), an infinite universe filled with more of the same as what we can detect in the "visible" universe would support what I call "the sameness doctrine", which simply posits that the greater universe is much like the portion of the universe that we can "see".


An infinite tapestry of days and nights all happening among the stars and galaxies, constantly and eternally.




160888,160907,

[Bogie_smiles (OP)]

Once you adopt the Sameness Doctrine, you might want to suppose a scenario that your place in space can remain fixed. But problems with the concept of a fixed point in space make it an exercise in futility, because every massive object in space is in motion relative to everything else. Therefore there is nothing to which you can anchor your fixed point of view. The point of view drifts and that drift might be immeasurable, or at least difficult to quantify, and would certainly throw off measurements of the relative locations of multiple objects to some degree.




160931,160996,