The actual size of the universe

[gmilam]

What if the spiritual realm is the realm where there's actually extant life and the "so called" "spiritual realm" so badly misunderstood that we view it to be something far fetched, invisible, and non existent.

Or, more likely, it IS non-existent.

 

[Saint]

Not for me as I am not convinced there is a spiritual real. Also, Souls, ghosts, spirits, gods, goddesses, heaven or hell.

That’s just me.

Do not limit your mind to what you can only see.

 

[James R]

"...the visible universe is 93 billion light years wide..."

Who cares?

Can't know it. Can't prove it.

So your claim is that somebody just made up a random number, then, is it? Interesting. Why that particular number, then?

 

[James R]

When I was a little boy, maybe 6 years old, 1964, space flight was new and exciting. I remember imagining being an astronaut and tooling around the universe in my rocket ship. I thought about what would happen when I reached the edge of the universe. Would there be a brick wall or what? Well that introduced the thought of what's on the other side of the wall? So I discarded that idea. Then I remembered my dad telling me that if I started walking and continued to walk in a straight line, that I would eventually come back to where I started. So I figured the same thing would happen in my imaginary spaceship. The universe must somehow curve back in on itself. Never acquired the math or science education to pursue that line of inquiry, but 60 years later I still find it an interesting idea.

Back in the 1960s, the possibility that the universe is closed was more plausible than it is today. Closed means what you say: that if you jumped in your spaceship and travelled continuously in one direction, you'd eventually come back to where you started. The other possibility is an open universe, in which you could travel forever in one direction and never return.

Theoretical cosmological models allow for closed universes and open universes and "flat" universes, with "flat" being a sort of borderline version between the two, although a flat universe looks more "open" than "closed".

In the 1960s, it was thought that whether the universe was open or closed would be determined mainly by the average density of mass and energy in the universe. With enough mass, the universe would have to be closed; not enough mass and the universe is open. The mass density also determines the long-term fate of the universe. Closed universes are destined to slow their expansion over time, and then start collapsing again, eventually ending in a "big crunch". Open universes (and flat ones), on the other hand, expand forever.

Observations of the mass density in our universe actually show that out universe is so close to being "flat" than we can't be sure if it is open or closed (or actually flat).

However, recently a huge spanner has been thrown into the works. We discovered that our universe is not just expanding, but that the expansion is accelerating. In mass-only models of the universe, such behaviour is impossible. However, Einstein's equations from back in the 1910s allow for the possibility of a cosmological constant in the relevant gravitational equations. For most of the 20th century, it was thought that the cosmological constant of our universe was probably zero; this is what Einstein himself guessed. But a non-zero cosmological constant would produce the sort of accelerating expansion of the universe than we have observed.

The question then becomes: what causes a non-zero cosmological constant? The current answer is: we don't know. The place-holder name that is given to the cause, these days, is "dark energy". To match observations, dark energy must make up about 75% of our universe, and we don't know what it is yet. However, there don't seem to be many other viable candidate theories that can explain the apparent accelerating expansion of our universe.

There's work still to be done in cosmology, clearly.

 

[James R]

If I'm not mistaken, I believe science has already established the fact that the entire universe is energy and all energy vibrates at, I believe, infinitely varying frequencies.

Energy is really just a sort of accounting system used in science. Energy isn't a substance. Nothing is made of energy. Also, since energy is really just a number we can calculate for a given system, it doesn't have any properties other than the properties numbers have. In particular, it makes no sense to talk about the "frequency" of some energy. Waves of various kinds have frequencies, but energy is not a wave.

I do believe a major portion of the Universe to be unseen existing at vibrations that are incredibly too high for any scientific instruments currently in existence.

Interesting. Why do you believe that? What evidence do you have that supports your belief?

I also believe that consciousness continues to exist in some form or another in this part of the much higher vibratory Universe and that consciousness still has the ability to harness a "physical" body of sorts within these higher vibratory areas of the Universe, meaning that the Universe could be teaming with life throughout this "infinite" universe, both seen and unseen.

Are you talking about life after death? Or just "invisible" (undetectable) consciousnesses? If they are undetectable, why do you believe they exist?

I believe the part of the Universe we are able to see and detect with all of our most advanced telescopes only makes up an incredibly tiny fraction of the Universe as a whole.

That's consistent with standard ideas in astronomy. After all, light has only had the opportunity to travel in the universe for 13 billion years or so, so we can't see anything further away than 13 billion light years.*

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* Actually, it's not quite that simple, because space itself has expanded since the big bang, but there's still a furthest distance we can receive any information from.

 

[exchemist]

Like the word "God", the word "spirit" has become such a loaded word with a ton of religious baggage attached to it, so I try not to use those words anymore as they contain so many different meanings.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe science has already established the fact that the entire universe is energy and all energy vibrates at, I believe, infinitely varying frequencies. I do believe a major portion of the Universe to be unseen existing at vibrations that are incredibly too high for any scientific instruments currently in existence. I also believe that consciousness continues to exist in some form or another in this part of the much higher vibratory Universe and that consciousness still has the ability to harness a "physical" body of sorts within these higher vibratory areas of the Universe, meaning that the Universe could be teaming with life throughout this "infinite" universe, both seen and unseen. I believe the part of the Universe we are able to see and detect with all of our most advanced telescopes only makes up an incredibly tiny fraction of the Universe as a whole.

I usually like to analogize the Universe with the following:

Imagine everything our telescopes can see, including the trillions of galaxies throughout the "known" Universe, and put all of that into a tiny grain of sand. Now imagine countless grains of sand covering the entire surface of a sphere the size of Earth and this would give you a hypothetical idea of the size of the physical Universe. Everything beneath or within the surface of this sphere would be the remainder of the Universe or the unseen part of the Universe, and if you were to consider the Universe to be infinite then you could multiply this scenario countless times.

Anyway, that's how I like to look at it.

Aha, now I begin to understand your internet handle. I was wondering what "zero point native" could possibly refer to.

A lot of your post isn't science but some kind of personal metaphysics. As James points out, this energy and "vibrations" stuff is risky and sounds like woo: you know, "it's all vibrations, man". There is a sense in which that is kind of true-ish, in that quantum mechanics, and in particular quantum field theory (QFT), deals with apparently wavelike behaviour of matter - and even of fields (in the physics sense). But I think it would be better to speak of "waves, man" rather than "vibrations, man" - and actually they are not really waves either, just wavelike in certain respects.

If you are interested in the zero point energy of the vacuum and its relation to cosmology, there quite a nice article here on the subject, which dispels a few myths: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/follow-up-what-is-the-zer/

In this article, Baez sounds to me right in what he says. The materials scientist, burbling about a "seething cauldron of energy" is I think speaking ex ano.

(I should say here that I'm just a chemist with some knowledge of quantum chemistry. I am not a quantum physicist, and I have not studied QFT. So I just have to go on what I have read, with the advantage of understanding some of the QM concepts that are used.)

 

[Pinball1970]

Do not limit your mind to what you can only see.

I don’t. I limit my mind to that which can be tested experimentally.

I cannot see gravity, quarks or EM fields but I know they are there.

If one cannot do that, then we can just imagine anything we want and claim it is thing with zero evidence.


I don’t think that gets us very far.

 

[Zero Point Native]

Aha, now I begin to understand your internet handle. I was wondering what "zero point native" could possibly refer to.

A lot of your post isn't science but some kind of personal metaphysics.

Ya caught me. I based my handle on that point where energy is in its native state - unobserved and unadulterated pure native energy.

 

[exchemist]

Ya caught me. I based my handle on that point where energy is in its native state - unobserved and unadulterated pure native energy.

Haha. But do me a favour and never, please, talk of pure energy. That is Star Trek and not science.

As James says, energy is not stuff: you can't have a bottle of energy. Energy is a calculated property of a physical system. It has no independent existence, any more than temperature has, or momentum.

 

[ThazzarBaal]

Or, more likely, it IS non-existent.

Yeah, I think a man or woman needs to have some spirit inside themselves for there to be life, whether physical aspects of life or spiritual. I get emotional ... Call me sensitive.