I still find it hard to believe the complexity of the universe to be mere chance

[Ele124]

Care to share a link supporting your first paragraph Killybob? Astrophysics isnt my strong point, but I was under the impression that such feats werent yet possible.

EDIT: Just to make myself clear, the first paragraph in the above post.

[BluePriest]

Care to share a link supporting your first paragraph Killybob? Astrophysics isnt my strong point, but I was under the impression that such feats werent yet possible.

EDIT: Just to make myself clear, the first paragraph in the above post.

If im not mistaken, its quite common knowledge that the universe is expanding, and so there is an edge to it. Its not infinite.

[EvaRia]

I was not claiming that it is.

I am merely giving you a point to consider regarding chance.

We have no idea whether the universe is infinite or not. Even if we can prove that it has an edge, we still cannot prove that it will not be around forever.

[hrmmm]

... take the man who theorized the fact that the earth was round in the middle of the period where stereotypical middle ages Catholics and got severely persecuted.

erm... since the ancient greeks, earth was knowned as spherical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

[Bloodshadow]

I'm not going to read the entire thread; I'll just throw my argument out here, since it seems like nobody had made this argument yet.

The very fact that we exist right now is by pure chance, pure quantum randomness. Immediately after the big bang, 7 of the 11 dimensions in our universe collapsed into infinitely small spaces. There are infinite ways in which these dimensions could be collapsed, and these ways determine the laws of physics (e.g. the speed of light, the strength of gravity). Our universe has its laws of physics arranged in such a way that it would eventually stabilize and create intelligent life, and the chance that the laws of physics could be set up in this particular way is indeed extremely low. It's like winning a lottery; the chance of anyone winning is very low, but if you win then you really did win by pure chance.

If anyone understands quantum theory more than I do, please correct me. I do want to learn more.

[QuantumT]

Care to share a link supporting your first paragraph Killybob? Astrophysics isnt my strong point, but I was under the impression that such feats werent yet possible.

EDIT: Just to make myself clear, the first paragraph in the above post.

If im not mistaken, its quite common knowledge that the universe is expanding, and so there is an edge to it. Its not infinite.

When scientists say that it's expanding, they ean that all the stuff in the universe seems to be spreading out, not that we can see an edge.

... take the man who theorized the fact that the earth was round in the middle of the period where stereotypical middle ages Catholics and got severely persecuted.

erm... since the ancient greeks, earth was knowned as spherical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

If I had to guess, I think he's talking about Galileo, Bruno, and others who were persecuted for promoting a heliocentric view of the solar system. In fact, Bruno was executed for it.

I'm not going to read the entire thread; I'll just throw my argument out here, since it seems like nobody had made this argument yet.

The very fact that we exist right now is by pure chance, pure quantum randomness. Immediately after the big bang, 7 of the 11 dimensions in our universe collapsed into infinitely small spaces. There are infinite ways in which these dimensions could be collapsed, and these ways determine the laws of physics (e.g. the speed of light, the strength of gravity). Our universe has its laws of physics arranged in such a way that it would eventually stabilize and create intelligent life, and the chance that the laws of physics could be set up in this particular way is indeed extremely low. It's like winning a lottery; the chance of anyone winning is very low, but if you win then you really did win by pure chance.

If anyone understands quantum theory more than I do, please correct me. I do want to learn more.

I'm pretty sure that stuff is mostly just conjecture right now. It's all mathematically self consistent, but it's just that we don't have any way of testing it yet.

[Influx]

To the sentiment posed in the topic title, think about it this way:

Say you are standing on a perfectly flat surface and you have 100 or so tiny rocks in your hand, and each of these rocks were numbered.  Now throw them all up in the air, and record where they all land, down to the millimeter.  Now pick them all up again, and keep throwing them until they all land EXACTLY as they did the first time you threw them.  Not going to happen, right?

There was an infinitely small chance that the rocks were going to land exactly where they did, but they did anyway.  Just because they stones had a 1/~infinity chance to land in that exact layout doesn't mean that that particular layout is anything special.  Its just how it happened.

The universe is the same way.  There were virtually infinite outcomes, but this is what happened.  Its not anything special.  Our planet was more or less randomly formed, and it just so happened to support life.

[Daytripper]

This is obviously a very difficult issue. Understanding a process to the fullest detail is arguably very problematic. The phrase '''a higher being did it'' is not in any way a better explanation. You have no idea how it happened. I can say: ''Well I can't see how a higher being could have created everything, as this being would have been very complex to begin with.'' 

What limited things I know about the topic, yes, the universe is supposed to be expanding. As it gets bigger, it expands at a faster and faster rate. Therefore it is not infinite, but it has no boundaries either. Since it keeps expanding, it is not an issue entropy is increasing either. Locally, it doesn't have to be a problem.

I have read the article about an earh like planet a while back. What I remember? That it was a deduction. There may well be such a planet near a sun like star, but I'm not even sure it was observed.

Overall, it would not tell us much if life was more frequent. The universe doesn't look designed for life, if that's what you mean. Most of it is just vast space and matter acting in a random manner.

[Ele124]

Our race is still VERY young. I appreciate the work of science, but we simply dont have the means to fully investigate our envionment atm. Maybe in a million years when we're a little more matured we can fully discount god (and the almighty spaghetti monster) as valid theories to the big questions.

Again, im not completely in touch with the astro side of my discipline, but as far as im aware the only real evidence we have that our universe is expanding is that signals we receive from other galaxies are red-shifted, hinting that there may have been a big bang initially. Any theories as to the nature of the edge of our universe (if there is an edge, the nature of the edge, whats beyond the edge etc) seem quite religious to me...

As for the title of this topic, I should probably start talking about the anthropic principle and expansion and contraction theories for the big bang, but im a lil busy right now. Maybe later.

[Mark_Tran]

So it takes us right back to the age old question:  Do we fall off the edge if we can reach it?

What is outside the boundaries of our expanding universe?

[BluePriest]

I was simplifying things to make a point. The edge of the universe is just the edge of where matter exists anymore. You can go past that, and its just regular space.

[Mark_Tran]

I was simplifying things to make a point. The edge of the universe is just the edge of where matter exists anymore. You can go past that, and its just regular space.

What exactly is "regular space"?