Thread: Wow...the Universe

Hitchhiker's Guide? Just a guess, but it sounds like something from the Guide.

BTW, it's not true. There's not an infinite amount of space in the universe.

True, there is not infinite space. Even if there were, that wouldn't imply that the population of space is zero. It'd be an extremely small number, but never zero. Anything divided by infinity would look something like
.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000001 (obviously, the zeroes would repeat forever, but the one at the end would endure). Thus, while the population in comparison with infinity may be too small to ever comprehend, it is never zero.

EDIT: Just remembered somethin. Even if there were only life on say, 1 out of every 100 planets, the population of life still has potential to be infinite. Think of it like this: numbers are infinite, but what about just the even numbers? They too are infinite, but in a smaller set of infinity. Instead of counting every number, you only count every other number and you still get a set of infinity. So the same goes for life; if one out of every 100 planets contain life then you'd count every hundredth number into infinity. Oddly, there are smaller and larger inifinties...the infinite set of natural numbers is smaller than the infinite set of all numbers (that is, including all natural numbers and decimals). Damn, infinity is insane.

Originally Posted by magicrules22311

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

-Rob
Guess what this is from!
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Whoever said that needs to learn some math. Infinity is not a number, and it cannot be divided. The term "infinite number" means that there is no end, no limit. It does not mean that infinity is actually a number. The number of points in a line is infinite. There are an infinite number of segments in a line. There are an infinite number of a points in a segment. Lines have an infinite number of segments, but lines and segments both have an infinite number of points. It is the same in both cases. Saying that something is finite because it is part of the composition of infinity is false mathematical analysis.

You also cannot divide a number by infinity. Infinity is not a number. Furthermore, extreme smallness is not the same as zero.

Maybe the passage was written from a deliberately irrational perspective for fiction purposes, but I felt the need to point out the false reasoning of it.

Bit of an echo, but this might help illustrate why infinity can't be played with like the OP suggests: The Hotel Ad Infinitum.

Originally posted by 'link'
The point of all this is that infinity is NOT a number, and--though there is a subject called "transfinite arithmetic"--you can't think in terms of doing ordinary arithmetic with infinity. The best way to think about it, is that infinity is a property that some sets possess. Richard Dedekind defined an infinite set to be one which could be put in one-to-one correspondence with a proper subset of itself. It is this strange property that I have played with in the telling of my weird tale.

Haha well, I love how you guys tried to pull apart the passage. I thought it was just something that was kind of funny and was not ment to be taken seriously.


oh well.


-Rob

You have made a bit of fuss about things you don't understand. As well as we all cannot. Maybe it would be better to start from the inside?

Originally Posted by magicrules22311

Haha well, I love how you guys tried to pull apart the passage. I thought it was just something that was kind of funny and was not ment to be taken seriously.
oh well.
-Rob
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Heh. Nah, it IS funny. I'm right though, it's from the Guide or one of the qeuels right?

I believe it's from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the second book in the series.

If there is an infinite number of worlds (I think with that you mean universes), then there is an infinite number of habitated ones. Infinity divided by everything but 0 or negative values is still infinity, isn't it?

Right.

I agree on the imposibility to import/export stuff, that is I think close to a 100% impossible. Point is that means that we will never Truely know what is 'outside' our universe.


About the infinite size... I don't know. Personally I think the universe it bend into itself, like on of those infinite rings thingy it has no boarders (if you see that thing as a 2d model for a 4d something), yet at some point you will allways return to where you started.