Thread: Space cannot be infinite

Space cannot be infinite because then there would be an infinity of solar system, meaning an infinity of planets resulting in an infinity of peoples. There cannot be an infinite of peoples because there cannot be an infinity of spirits.

Infinity is not a number. It just never stop going but that is impossible. Only numbers go to infinity but most numbers will never be used since they go to infinity meaning that trillions of trillions of trillions of number will not be used. Actually, what I just said is wrong. infinity doesn't represent a large number. An infinity of numbers will never be used. That's the actual statement. And time might be infinite too.

Its sorta hard to explain though..

Originally Posted by SleepyCookieDough

Space cannot be infinite because then there would be an infinity of solar system, meaning an infinity of planets resulting in an infinity of peoples. There cannot be an infinite of peoples because there cannot be an infinity of spirits.

Why can't there be an infinite number of people? How do we know spirits exist? That's not valid.

Infinity is not a number. It just never stops going but that is impossible.

It's not a number. However, it can be used as a limit, or lack thereof. Why is it impossible that it doesn;t stop going? Just because it's impossible to picture, doesn't mean that it's impossible. Maybe we just can't percieve it. We can't percieve a 4D cube (tesseract) because we are 3D objects, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible. It's a bit ignorant to say that.

Only numbers go to infinity but most numbers will never be used since they go to infinity meaning that trillions of trillions of trillions of number will not be used. Actually, what I just said is wrong. infinity doesn't represent a large number. An infinity of numbers will never be used. That's the actual statement. And time might be infinite too.

Its sorta hard to explain though..

Time isn't infinite: Time is part of space. We percieve time as a linear movement of events. However, that's not true, but it does make sense for what we use it for, like what "time" we have to be at a place. It works.

Space cannot be infinite because then there would be an infinity of solar system, meaning an infinity of planets resulting in an infinity of peoples. There cannot be an infinite of peoples because there cannot be an infinity of spirits.

Although you phrased it like one, this is not a coherent logical deduction.

You need to explain why there cannot be an infinity of 'spirits'.

Space can be infinite, but there can only be finite amount of matter. Therefore there is a finite amount of solar systems and a finite amount of people.

Personally i think space is big. Really big. You just wouldn't believe how vastly, hugely, mindboggelingly big it is... And so on...

Why can't there be an infinite amount of matter?

You people need to have backup and explanations for your statements.

Originally Posted by Sound

Personally i think space is big. Really big. You just wouldn't believe how vastly, hugely, mindboggelingly big it is... And so on...

lol

Also... "who are you" to say that there are spirits, or how many there can be? Besides, why couldn't there be an infinite amount of space, but a limited amount of matter.

Originally Posted by Xei

Although you phrased it like one, this is not a coherent logical deduction.

You need to explain why there cannot be an infinity of 'spirits'.

Originally Posted by Bonsay

lol

Also... "who are you" to say that there are spirits, or how many there can be? Besides, why couldn't there be an infinite amount of space, but a limited amount of matter.

As I have said before.

Thanks.

Of course.

I thought astrophysics already had covered this

The universe is not infinite, it is expanding in all directions, including already existing space (The expanding balloon analogy).

The observable Universe is 93 billion light years in diameter.

Two pictures:






These are the biggest structures of the Universe: Superclusters, each supercluster contains up to thousands of galaxies.



You might also want to read on matter in the univers



Obviously there are no infinite amount of matter in the Universe, if the Universe was infinite in its space heath death would be the case, and we would not exist.

Originally Posted by Sound

Space can be infinite, but there can only be finite amount of matter.

Everything is matter...

Originally Posted by Mark75

Mobius. And I think it's supposed to have the two dots over the O, but I can't be bothered to open up the character map to find them.

Like a Möbius band? The universe is like that ???

Thank you! That's what it is.

But I don't know why I said anything at all seeing how none of this makes much sense to me any how

Space cannot be infinite because then there would be an infinity of solar system, meaning an infinity of planets resulting in an infinity of peoples. There cannot be an infinite of peoples because there cannot be an infinity of spirits.

Infinity is not a number. It just never stop going but that is impossible. Only numbers go to infinity but most numbers will never be used since they go to infinity meaning that trillions of trillions of trillions of number will not be used. Actually, what I just said is wrong. infinity doesn't represent a large number. An infinity of numbers will never be used. That's the actual statement. And time might be infinite too.

Its sorta hard to explain though..

One thing about these trains of thought is that you have to keep supporting your claims. Your argument, there cannot be infinite solar systems because there cannot be infinite planets because there cannot be infinite people because there cannot be infinite spirits because there cannot be infinite... Infinite what? You have to keep going. Granted, you have to stop somewhere. But you can't stop until you reach a scientific law. Eventually you may reach 'because of thermodynamics' or 'because of gravity.' Something like that.

That notwithstanding, you make alot of assumptions in your argument. The whole big bang goes off of alot of assumptions, as well. I'll allow that something like Evolution does, too, but it is supported by so much objective evidence that it becomes a logical belief. The evidence outweighs the assumptions. With the big bang theory, the assumptions outweigh the evidence. That's not to say it's wrong. That's just to say that we are incredibly ignorant about quantam physics and dark matter and black holes, etc. We've alot of hypothesis on this idea. Very few theories. So we can't use the big bang as an assumption.

So, yeah, people who try and qoute the 'expanding universe' thing as some scientific concensus, or the idea that 'light hasn't reached every corner of the galaxy yet' as fact are being presumptious. I've read some stuff about Stephen Hawking's/Einstien's ideas. Nothing major, so I'm no expert. But realize that sooo much of the concepts presented by either of those gentelman are thought expiriments. They are interesting to think about, and certainly presented by remarkably intelligent gentleman, but they have little objective value.

My point is that nobody knows the answer to the question invited in the OP. It is fun to discuss, but if everyone talks about this topic under the pretense that there aren't any sides as these are suppositional/conjectural opinions than the discussion will go much smoother. No-one should try and take an I'm right, you're wrong attitude. We are all just having a friendly discussion on the 'maybes' of science. Or we should, at any rate.

My understanding is that general relativity essentialy says that space time is a solution of the Einstein field equations. There are lot's of solutions.

As far as I know, the standard ones are finite but unbounded. Think of the surface of a sphere as a finite but unbounded space: an ant could start walking on it and never run into a boundary. EDIT: and yes UM, eventually come back to its starting point.

I do believe I recall, but could not find quickly find reference too, infinite solutions. At anyrate, as I recall, the infinite solutions had space time expanding in such a manner that anything beyond the edge of the visible universe would be moving faster then the speed of light so that photons would never reach us to begin with.

As Spockman pointed out though, the beauty of science is that it is all theory. Any theory we cook up will be superceded by a better one. Unless we have empirical confirmation of something that a theory says, It is only a potential failing point for our current theory.

UM, I think that we can get from point A to B "faster" than light speed, not by traveling faster than light (Depends on the reference system I guess) but from bending space-time.

Very similar to the question proposed on http://hypography.com/forums/physics...tion-pass.html

The paper folding analogy describes how it can be conceptualized-

The way I prefer to think of space, is that it's neither fenite nor infinite.
Think of a sphere (or a circle). The sphere is the universe, all the stars, galaxies, dark-matter and energy is located within this sphere. So comes the dilemma: What's outside the sphere?
The answer is (as in can be) "nothing". There's no matter, no electromagnetic waves, no energy. And therefore, what's outside the sphere does not exist. But if you imagine you're in a spaceship, and travel out past the sphere's "edge", you're not actually moving outside of the "edge". You're simply expanding the sphere itself. In this interpretation there're no limit, you could travel forward without getting looped back for our entire concept of time. And if you turned around and went back, the sphere would shrink until you were no longer the only energy located at the boundary. I think that's the easiest approach.

Originally Posted by SleepyCookieDough

Space cannot be infinite because then there would be an infinity of solar system

There is no evidence to suggest that endless space requires and endless amount of matter/energy. Your argument is void because of that alone.

Is it not possible for a fixed amount of matter to exist, and endless space to extend beyond it?

To be honest we just need somebody who knows something about General Relativity. I have a feeling that space itself is finite and expanding, but I'm not sure.

I know about General Relativity. I've been reading Stephen Hawking's book A Breifer History of Time.

I believe that space is finite, but is eternally expanding.

I've read it too, but there is a distinction between an expanding universe and expanding space... can you get a quote?

In a little, I put it down a few weeks ago, haven't had a chance to pick it up again. I'll try to get one later.

Originally Posted by Xei

I've read it too, but there is a distinction between an expanding universe and expanding space... can you get a quote?

Exellenct artile on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space

This illustration illustrates it pretty well.

I think that the universe loops around, so if you go into one direction you'll come back to the same spot. Well, I actually just don't comprehend an edge of the universe and this would make sense. It's also one of the theories - that it's bent through another dimension. It would make the universe be a whole entity, but what do I know...

Originally Posted by SleepyCookieDough

Space cannot be infinite because then there would be an infinity of solar system

Not necessarily. Space could be infinite and have nothing more than our known universe.

meaning an infinity of planets resulting in an infinity of peoples. There cannot be an infinite of peoples because there cannot be an infinity of spirits.

...

To avoid the flames, I'll keep it short: religion is not logic, and religion is not logical. Don't use spirits in logical reasoning, or the result will not be true.

Infinity is not a number.

It depends on how you define it. If you define it as just an arbitrarily large number, it is not a number. If you define it as larger than any real number, and not having any number greater than it, then infinity is a number.

It just never stop going but that is impossible.

Impossible in the real field. The definition of virtual is: that which would be real, if it existed.

Only numbers go to infinity

Of course, because infinity is a number. You can't say "only flowers are flowers" and use it as argument. Mathematics is a model for understanding the universe.

but most numbers will never be used since they go to infinity meaning that trillions of trillions of trillions of number will not be used. Actually, what I just said is wrong. infinity doesn't represent a large number. An infinity of numbers will never be used. That's the actual statement. And time might be infinite too.

Yup, you were right this time. Matter is: time is not only infinite in the direction of the future, but also in the direction of the past.

Its sorta hard to explain though..

Indeed.

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I didn't use any cosmo- or quantum-physics because I don't think those sciences are advanced enough, and also because they don't (yet) deal with other hypothetical or virtual realities. But they do provide you with a great deal of explanations, in case you're interested.

Do any of you remember the video game Pacman? There were these exits where Pacman would go out and immediately come in through another one. Maybe space is finite like a Pacman board. If you travel far enough away from Earth, you reach Earth?

Probably not, but I like the idea.