High School The M paradox

[MahamedIfzal]

TL;DR

The paradox is a fun imaginary if light enters outside the universe where there's nothing but if light entered in nothing it won't be nothing anymore it would become something

I Made a Weird Paradox

Hi! My name is [Ifzal], and I’m a student who loves thinking about space, time, and the really weird edges of the universe. My passion is adventure in ideas, especially when it comes to imagining things nobody can see.

I’ve been playing with a strange thought experiment, and I’m not sure if it’s been done before. This isn’t a theory — it’s just something I made up while imagining the edge of the universe.

Imagine the universe has an edge, and outside that edge there is true nothing — not empty space, not vacuum, but literally:

no space

no time

no dimensions

no physics at all


Now imagine a photon travelling from inside the universe into this “nothing.”

Here’s the paradox I ran into:

If the photon enters the nothingness, even for the tiniest possible time — for example 10⁻³⁰⁰⁰⁰ nanoseconds — then something existed in nothing. And if something can exist in nothing, even for that tiny instant, then it wasn’t “nothing” anymore.

But if nothing must stay pure nothing, then the photon shouldn’t be able to enter it at all. Not even for a moment that small.

And there’s another weird part I can’t even describe properly. If the photon touches true nothing, it should be destroyed instantly because there’s no time there. But the destruction is still some kind of “event,” so it feels like it should need a tiny bit of time to happen. Not real time, but like… time-but-not-time. I don’t even know what to call it. It can’t take any time, but also it can’t take literally zero time, or else nothing actually happened. That’s another part that makes the whole thing feel like a paradox.

So I end up with a contradiction:

If the photon exists there → nothing becomes something → paradox

If the photon can’t exist there → the edge can never be crossed


It kind of feels like “true nothingness” can’t logically touch or contain anything without instantly stopping being nothing.

I’m curious if this paradox is known, or if physicists or philosophers have thought about it. I’d love to hear what people think.

Thanks for reading!

 

[PeroK]

I’m curious if this paradox is known, or if physicists or philosophers have thought about it. I’d love to hear what people think.

It's difficult to know how we could possibly describe the physics at the edge of the universe. Most people who have studied physics can see this. Wikipedia has the following to say:

Assuming a finite universe, the universe can either have an edge or no edge. Many finite mathematical spaces, e.g., a disc, have an edge or boundary. Spaces that have an edge are difficult to treat, both conceptually and mathematically. Namely, it is difficult to state what would happen at the edge of such a universe. For this reason, spaces that have an edge are typically excluded from consideration.

However, there exist many finite spaces, such as the 3-sphere and 3-torus, that have no edges. Mathematically, these spaces are referred to as being compact without boundary. The term compact means that it is finite in extent ("bounded") and complete. The term "without boundary" means that the space has no edges. Moreover, so that calculus can be applied, the universe is typically assumed to be a differentiable manifold. A mathematical object that possesses all these properties, compact without boundary and differentiable, is termed a closed manifold. The 3-sphere and 3-torus are both closed manifolds.

To read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe

 

[DaveC426913]

Imagine the universe has an edge, and outside that edge there is true nothing

Indeed, it is possible to create paradoxes if we imagine things that we are not confident exist.

A square circle.
A red blue.
A prime number greater than 2.

We have no reason to think the universe has an edge and is then surrounded by nothing. It would violate a whole bunch of physics. So we reject it, in favour of models that are better evidenced.

 

[Hornbein]

It kind of feels like “true nothingness” can’t logically touch or contain anything without instantly stopping being nothing.

OK

I’m curious if this paradox is known, or if physicists or philosophers have thought about it. I’d love to hear what people think.

Can't say I'd ever given the matter any thought before now. If something is completely empty then it's completely empty so it must forever remain directly unknown.

 

[Nugatory]

Here’s the paradox I ran into:

Any time you run into a paradox, your first thought should be that you have taken a wrong turn on the way there.
You have started from "Imagine the universe has an edge, and outside that edge there is true nothing" and arrived at a contradiction. That is a fairly strong hint that your starting point is wrong.

Several posters above have clarified that a finite universe does not require an edge, and that any successful theory of the universe will not include an edge.... and then there is no paradox.

As this thread is based on a misconception that has been addressed, it is now closed.