B What is the important scale of things in the Universe?

[Suppaman]

TL;DR Summary

How is the universe best viewed considering the great difference between smallest and largets things?

Summary: How is the universe best viewed considering the great difference between smallest and largets things?

I am not sure how to phrase this question so forgive me if it is all wrong. I have noticed that science is doing a lot with small, very small things. They also do a lot with big ideas, like planets. The universe seems to have components of all sizes. What is the nominal size of important things? I can go outside at night and see the moon. If I look at my hand in the moonlight, I do not see a cell or the DNA within. If we as humans contemplate only those things, we can see there is a lot of small stuff going uncontemplated. If I write a simple BASIC program I can think about how it works; I can know about the hardware (I do) and think about it all working as a package. Now, if DNA is just software, I am not sure some minds can think about how it works to a degree they could modify it to make any living beast return to the present.

See, I am just trying to see if there is a scale of things that we are not part of, we are too big but a small version of us (an AI?) is not yet available to contemplate things. We can do things on a large scale, make big things, but we do not easily make small things or modify small things. Add an atom here, see what we get. We can do this on a large scale, build a 747 but we are not so good at creating a new one-celled creature from scratch (or did we?)

To get a proper view of the universe, what size should the viewer be? I apologize for rambling on, please put this question in the proper place and if there is no proper place, why not?

 

[DennisN]

Hi,

What is the nominal size of important things?

Important to whom? Important in what way?

[] but we are not so good at creating a new one-celled creature from scratch (or did we?)

As far as I know, there hasn't yet been any successful artificial synthesis of life.

 

[Suppaman]

We can walk around the world and see and touch and learn and modify and build on the human scale. Just people can do this and we see what that got us. But we can not watch how a cell works from the inside of it, to see and touch. The world is full of insects, some are very small, they have a different view of the universe than we do. How would our view of the universe change if we could see it from different perspectives? What view is the most important? That would suggest a scale for a viewer.

 

[Dale]

Summary: How is the universe best viewed considering the great difference between smallest and largets things?

To get a proper view of the universe, what size should the viewer be?

I don’t think that there is a unique answer to this question. Any scale that you fix will ignore interesting phenomena. There is something interesting at every scale.

 

[Suppaman]

Perhaps some scale is the most important with respect to what we can learn about ourselves? If consciousness is based on very small scale phenomena but we do not explore it there we might be delayed a very long time achieving enlightenment. As things get smaller we ask ourselves what these things are made of. When do we reach a limit or do we ever reach a limit?

 

[DennisN]

If consciousness is based on very small scale phenomena but we do not explore it

I'd say we are exploring it (neuroscience, psychology). Though there is still much we do not know about the brain.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Maths is our friend in being aware of 'scale'. The log scale and powers of ten gets over the main problem.
Take a look at this link - it's fun and gives you numbers on the right to help you keep track of where you are.

 

[Suppaman]

At our size, we do not experience such events as entanglement, action at a distance and a lot of stuff in QED. Perhaps life is different or governed by such phenomena on smaller scales. I do not know and speculation is not what I am looking for here. Also, the mention of math, I realized that my original digital camera back 20 years, had a limited resolution. And in reality a maximum number possible different number of images. A big number, and then I wondered if a universe of a trillion x trillion galaxies with lots of things to see in each over 15 billion years of events that we would run out of images? This is a new thought, not the original topic but I am just responding to the math fellow.

 

[hutchphd]

The discovery that "size matters" was considered of fundamental importance by Galileo:

http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/scaling.html
This surprisingly often seems not well understood .

 

[Dale]

At our size, we do not experience such events as entanglement, action at a distance and a lot of stuff in QED. Perhaps life is different or governed by such phenomena on smaller scales.

There is no indication that consciousness has anything to do with quantum phenomena. I think this thread is drifting into speculation.

 

[Suppaman]

I did not intend to speculate on anything, not even consciousness. I was just thinking that size can matter in anything. When I see an article about "Shape-encoded assembly of magnetic microactuators in the form of a microvehicle. C " it shows me we keep getting smaller results but perhaps we are finding a new universe (different by size) to explore?

 

[Dale]

but perhaps we are finding a new universe (different by size) to explore?

This is silly. By definition anything we find is part of this universe.

Time to close this thread. Please ask a focused question, not vague speculation.