Do we see the universe the way it is?

[mdmaaz]

I've read Stephen Hawking's book:"The Grand Design". In one paragraph it mentions that there is a city in Italy where keeping fish in round fish bowls has been banned. It had been because government officials thought is cruel to give the fish a distorted view of the universe (Round lens refracts light passing through it). But what about us? Could the universe we see just be an illusion? Besides we don't have any proof to verify that the universe we see is really the way it is. Share your views on this.

 

[ZapperZ]

You also don't have any proof that the universe we see isn't really the way it is.

Zz.

 

[turbo]

There are distortions in the way we see our universe, due to the limitations of our instruments. Take the Hubble Deep Fields, for instance. They show us that even the "emptiest" looking fields in space are loaded with high-redshift galaxies. However, these images cannot be assumed to show us representative galaxies at high redshifts because only the largest, brightest, most energetic galaxies will register in the images. Taking images at the limits of our instrumentation shows us outliers, and those outliers should not be assumed to be typical galaxies at their redshift.

The Webb telescope will allow us to probe deeper into the infrared and get a better view of objects whose luminosity is less energetic. That will augment our current capabilities and give us a better overall understanding of what is out there, but it is no panacea. We are limited to observing our universe from our vantage point, and interpreting our observations from our own experiences. Most humans are used to examining things in visible light, but observational astronomers look at the universe in many other EM bands, including X-rays, IR, and radio waves.

Observational astronomy is subject to Malmquist bias (please Google it) in every EM band that we observe in.

 

[Evo]

We see the universe the way it was.

 

[disregardthat]

The question doesn't really make sense to me. How can the universe appear wrongly? How the universe appears is a function of how our brains work, the universe doesn't have an intrinsic appearance.

 

[ZapperZ]

There are distortions in the way we see our universe, due to the limitations of our instruments. Take the Hubble Deep Fields, for instance. They show us that even the "emptiest" looking fields in space are loaded with high-redshift galaxies. However, these images cannot be assumed to show us representative galaxies at high redshifts because only the largest, brightest, most energetic galaxies will register in the images. Taking images at the limits of our instrumentation shows us outliers, and those outliers should not be assumed to be typical galaxies at their redshift.

The Webb telescope will allow us to probe deeper into the infrared and get a better view of objects whose luminosity is less energetic. That will augment our current capabilities and give us a better overall understanding of what is out there, but it is no panacea. We are limited to observing our universe from our vantage point, and interpreting our observations from our own experiences. Most humans are used to examining things in visible light, but observational astronomers look at the universe in many other EM bands, including X-rays, IR, and radio waves.

Observational astronomy is subject to Malmquist bias (please Google it) in every EM band that we observe in.

This completely missed the point. It has nothing to do with our instrumentation. The HUP, for example has nothing to do with "instrument resolution". We are not talking about how our improvement in measuring devices.

No one is talking about limits to the light cone of what we are observing. The issue here is that our observation is NOT what it really is. My argument is, what is the proof that that is true, and that there's something DIFFERENT than what we can and have observed.

Zz.

 

[russ_watters]

To me the OP just misuses the word "illusion". The effects of differences in the capabilities of sensors are not illusions.

 

[russ_watters]

You also don't have any proof that the universe we see isn't really the way it is.

Zz.

... and the fact that our theories work provides evidence that our observations are accurate.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I've read Stephen Hawking's book:"The Grand Design". In one paragraph it mentions that there is a city in Italy where keeping fish in round fish bowls has been banned. It had been because government officials thought is cruel to give the fish a distorted view of the universe (Round lens refracts light passing through it). But what about us? Could the universe we see just be an illusion? Besides we don't have any proof to verify that the universe we see is really the way it is. Share your views on this.

The best way I can think of to address the question "Do we see the universe the way it is" is to suggest that we cannot know. We could be a brain in a vat or a simulation in a universe totally different blah blah blah.

That addresses if the universe is as we perceive it, a similar but quite different question is "Is our understanding of the universe correct" which can only be confirmed through repeated testing.

 

[ViewsofMars]

I've read Stephen Hawking's book:"The Grand Design". In one paragraph it mentions that there is a city in Italy where keeping fish in round fish bowls has been banned. It had been because government officials thought is cruel to give the fish a distorted view of the universe (Round lens refracts light passing through it). But what about us? Could the universe we see just be an illusion? Besides we don't have any proof to verify that the universe we see is really the way it is. Share your views on this.

It's been a while since I read THE GRAND DESIGN by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. Please give me the page from the book that you are referencing in your statement. I'd like to review it. Thanks.

 

[DaveC426913]

Sounds like someone needs to read about Plato's Cave.

 

[turbo]

Sounds like someone needs to read about Plato's Cave.

Good suggestion. It may not be taken well, I fear.

 

[Willowz]

Sounds like someone needs to read about Plato's Cave.

Care to explain?

 

[Willowz]

"Why does it seem more natural for people to believe that the sun goes around the Earth rather than the other way around?

Well, obviously because it looks that way.

I see. And, how would it look if the Earth went around the sun?"

 

[turbo]

This completely missed the point. It has nothing to do with our instrumentation. The HUP, for example has nothing to do with "instrument resolution". We are not talking about how our improvement in measuring devices.

I never once mentioned "instrument resolution" as anyone who actually read my post could attest. I addressed the philosophical side of choosing our methods of observing (what wavelength do want to observe at?) and the effects of Malguist bias at every single EM range that we want to observe at, and how that effects our view of the Universe. Do you have a problem with any of that?

Please pull in the horns.

 

[ZapperZ]

I never once mentioned "instrument resolution" as anyone who actually read my post could attest. I addressed the philosophical side of choosing our methods of observing (what wavelength do want to observe at?) and the effects of Malguist bias at every single EM range that we want to observe at, and how that effects our view of the Universe. Do you have a problem with any of that?

Please pull in the horns.

If that is what you're stating, then you're in the wrong thread.

Zz.

 

[DaveC426913]

Care to explain?

Well, you can Google it better than I can describe it.
That way you'll get more or less out of it as you please.

 

[Willowz]

Well, you can Google it better than I can describe it.
That way you'll get more or less out of it as you please.

Yeah but then what's the point of saying it at all?

 

[DaveC426913]

Yeah but then what's the point of saying it at all?

Well, it certainly speaks directly to the question of 'can we trust what we see'? It's just that I don't want to taint the story with my own paraphrasing of the implications. (Frankly, I'm not really sure what the implications are - whether it bolsters or refutes the OP's question.)

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

The problem is that everyone thinks they see the universe the way it is and that everyone else doesn't.

 

[Zantra]

This is as much a philosopical debate as a scientific one..

It's as if you were blind and I asked you what the color red looked like, which leads back to the cave allergory...

Another point- we perceive the universe how we perceive it- there's no "right or wrong". If the question is whether we are "missing something", the answer is undoubtedly. There are likely many things we don't perceive with our understanding and capabilities. But what we perceive is no more wrong than how an ant perceives the world.

not a question of rigth or wrong-It's a matter of levels of perception. But we can't tell if something's "wrong" if we don't know what we're missing in the first place..

 

[Darken-Sol]

are we seeing the entire universe? if not, i doubt we are seeing as it is. are we percieving tha data properly? i guess... get it?

 

[kashaf]

strange... but interesting

 

[kashaf]

dats impossible...
we cnt see the universe...

 

[Ryan_m_b]

dats impossible...
we cnt see the universe...

Of course we can see the universe. We're doing it right now. Or are you saying we can't see it all at once?

Also text speak is banned on PF

 

[physiqueper4]

It is scary idea.The only crtitude is our days en by death, thus I do'nt care about what universe really is I prefer to spend good time in it befor I get recycled.Plato knew nothing comparing to our actual knowledges,that 's way the thread is post on physics forum.The things he and many great thinkers wrote about and discuss are now days princibles of thinking.We never trust an information even if proven many times, we always doubt science that is why science is keeping forward succesfully.
Very average example is colors, we know that structur of our eys is what makes us see the sky and the see bleu, trees gree...etc.
Yet the original thread try to speak about something abstract and far from now days tecnical abilities,it is an area of ideas and hypothesis from scientists such as "univers paralels" to the " dream theory" or even movies like Matrix.

 

[1MileCrash]

I think we perceive the universe in the way that allows us to survive and reproduce.. and nothing more.

 

[Willowz]

There are no grounds for doubting that we don't see the universe the way it "is".

If you are using the "is" of identity here (Do we see the universe the way it is?), then you have answered your own question. You see the universe the way you see it. No other way.

 

[Willowz]

Well, it certainly speaks directly to the question of 'can we trust what we see'?

We can most definitely trust what we can see. Just because you can't see some EM-waves doesn't mean they don't exist.

 

[turbo]

There are no grounds for doubting that we don't see the universe the way it "is".

If you are using the "is" of identity here (Do we see the universe the way it is?), then you have answered your own question. You see the universe the way you see it. No other way.

It matters greatly how we "observe". For instance, SDSS imaged the parts of the sky visible from their site in a range of bandwidths. Their filters are labeled u, g, r, i, and z. It is possible (and has been done quite well) to combine such imagery to simulate the appearance of broad-band visual images. Schmidt telescopes in the northern and southern hemispheres were used to make whole-sky surveys on photographic plates over a course of decades. The images were made in blue, red, and infrared bands. IRSA hosts those images, and supplies functionality to combine those images in multiple bands to simulate the appearance of broad-band images, though that is not as well-implemented as the SDSS method.

In each band, observations are subject to natural extinction (luminosity falls off as the square of our separation) and our perception of the observations is skewed by Malmquist bias, in which the brightest, most energetic objects at every redshift are over-represented while the fainter, more spread-out objects fail to show in our imagery.

Are there dwarf galaxies, low-surface brightness galaxies, or galaxies populated by old, red stars at high redshift? They may exist, but we would have great difficulty in detecting them because of natural extinction. The OP posted in philosophy, but there is plenty of hard science to apply to the question.