Will humans ever really understand why the universe exists?

[baywax]

For instance, does an illusion exist?

 

[Daniel Y.]

Asking why there is a universe is like asking whether or not your pencil is married. I suppose if you wanted to you could ask such questions, but there really is no point; the why of the universe question has no more meaning than the pencil question.

 

[baywax]

Asking why there is a universe is like asking whether or not your pencil is married. I suppose if you wanted to you could ask such questions, but there really is no point; the why of the universe question has no more meaning than the pencil question.

Hi, I'm actually into polygamy with a group of pencils ranging from 3b to 1f.

 

[robertm]

Ha Ha ha! I have that that same problem, except my wives are pens ranging from 0.2 - 0.5mm ... at least you can sharpen yours!

 

[epenguin]

A century ago you might have been in a better position to answer it will never be understood, it is beyond science etc. The one who said it would be discovered would have had to admit he had no idea how or what.

But now we are getting things like inflation, theories of everything, string theory and cosmological understanding, with their experimetal/observational backups.

This might not be right, final, complete etc. but it is a huge advance in a fairly short time on having not a clue.

Therefore I think it is reasonable to think we shall have this understanding within the lifetime of most readers.

 

[kasse]

We can and have made models that explain in great detail and even more importantly, WHY the universe exists at all?

It's important to think about what kind of answer you're searching. What will be satisfactory? In general: what on Earth is a why-question?

 

[baywax]

It's important to think about what kind of answer you're searching. What will be satisfactory? In general: what on Earth is a why-question?

Yeah, why is half of the word "whine".

But, I think I've answered the question in a sequential sense where... because of the singularity of the big bang, the complexity of the universe developed.

The next why will be, "why did the big bang happen"... and I'd say it was a reaction to an imbalance going on between a remaining em wave of a previous universe and... the "void".

The worst thing about why questions is that they can go on forever... they're a trick that 3 year old kids use to annoy grown-ups.

 

[end3r7]

I think we are reading too much into the question, personally (granted we are in the philosophy forum).

When I read the thread title, I was thinking along the lines of "How did the universe come about?", essentially origin of the universe stuff, etc.

I don't know if we will ever know this stuff, or even if the data we can now gather can gives us enough information. I believe that the Scientific American had an article on this issue (something regarding the Death of Cosmology?).

Regardless, it should be interesting how far we can push our limits. The Large Hadron Collider could be giving us very interesting data in 2-3 months. My bet is that before all is said and done, we'll know a lot of how the universe came to be what it now is.

 

[baywax]

The Large Hadron Collider could be giving us very interesting data in 2-3 months. My bet is that before all is said and done, we'll know a lot of how the universe came to be what it now is.

If it doesn't transform us all into a black hole, wheeeeeee!.

The builders of the world's biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/27/823924.aspx

 

[robertm]

Wow, they are already jumping on that, jeez I mean I saw it coming but I never imagined any action would be taken in till after the LHC cranked up... How incredibly sad, I wonder how much time and money that lawsuit is going to cost the team...

Not to mention the people bringing this lawsuit have a history of this doomsday nonsense, and they failed the last time. It will be quite an atrocity if some unqualified American crackpots are really given the power to halt a multi-billion dollar project in France/Switzerland.

 

[TR345]

I think that how always includes the why, but may necessitate more than just the answer of why. So asking how is like asking why and then some. For example if you ask why you signed up for physics forums, then you could answer because I wanted to. If you ask how did you sign up, the answer could include the whole set of whys all the way back to why the universe exists. How are you here and able to think, and then what processes led to the decision of signing up, how is there a physics forums in the first place, how does the internet exist for physics forums to be on etc etc. How is the cumulation of all factors and processes that made the event possible.

So I think that why is more likely to be answered than how, because how always includes the why.

 

[baywax]

Wow, they are already jumping on that, jeez I mean I saw it coming but I never imagined any action would be taken in till after the LHC cranked up... How incredibly sad, I wonder how much time and money that lawsuit is going to cost the team...

Not to mention the people bringing this lawsuit have a history of this doomsday nonsense, and they failed the last time. It will be quite an atrocity if some unqualified American crackpots are really given the power to halt a multi-billion dollar project in France/Switzerland.

Yeah, besides, why deny all of humanity the thrill of a lifetime. Turning into a black hole! Seriously, mind you, who are these people with the determination to bring this nebulous issue to supreme court?

 

[BrooklynBees]

I don't think so. It's not for us to know.

 

[robertm]

I don't think so. It's not for us to know.

Says who?? Who or what should prevent us? I have already stated that the 'why' question is a matter of semantics, but if you are stating that attaining a full understanding of the how when where ect... of the universe, of everything at all times, is not for us to know;

then I ask you to back that statement up with some sort of evidence, logical or physical; because I can not possibly imagine anyway that your statement could be logical unless you are alluding to religious supernatural ideas...

We the human race are not separate from the universe, we are a product of it. We are as of yet a very rare manifestation of matter, just the same as any other physical manifestation of matter.

So then how could there possibly be any reason for us not to know ourselves??

If I've misunderstood your post BrooklynBees then I apologize for my frankness. I simply am very passionate about the cosmos and I consider myself to be an extension of the stars

 

[TR345]

Says who?? Who or what should prevent us? I have already stated that the 'why' question is a matter of semantics, but if you are stating that attaining a full understanding of the how when where ect... of the universe, of everything at all times, is not for us to know;

then I ask you to back that statement up with some sort of evidence, logical or physical; because I can not possibly imagine anyway that your statement could be logical unless you are alluding to religious supernatural ideas...

We the human race are not separate from the universe, we are a product of it. We are as of yet a very rare manifestation of matter, just the same as any other physical manifestation of matter.

So then how could there possibly be any reason for us not to know ourselves??

If I've misunderstood your post BrooklynBees then I apologize for my frankness. I simply am very passionate about the cosmos and I consider myself to be an extension of the stars

It might not be for us to know the same way it isn't for bacteria to know why a dirty sponge exists.

 

[TR345]

I simply am very passionate about the cosmos and I consider myself to be an extension of the stars

Passion can be very blinding to the truth some times. You should never mix emotion with scientific reasoning.

 

[robertm]

Your argument is invalid, bacteria have just as much a right to understand themselves as we do, they simply do not have the mental capacity to. If you believe that is the case with humans then your argument might have something to it, though I disagree.

Agreed, passion in its most base forms is ugly and indeed blinding. I used the word passion because it is the closest approximation that I could think of to explain how I feel when I think about the cosmos in a non-acedimic setting. I assure you that when it comes to scientific reasoning my left brain fully takes over. Also, my comment about my passion was used as an explanation for my language, not my reasoning.

 

[baywax]

and I consider myself to be an extension of the stars

That makes you nearly 14 billion years old, and everything else too.

 

[robertm]

Precisely baywax! I am quite traveled, as we all are (our atoms anyway).

 

[baywax]

Precisely baywax! I am quite traveled, as we all are (our atoms anyway).

What else is there? And (in the spirit of this thread) why is it?!

 

[Kenny_L]

Nobody can be sure if humans will get to understand how the universe came about, and how it exists...etc. That's because we just "don't know". We might...and we might not. Nobody knows...just like we don't know what's the origin of everything (or origin of anything).

 

[aranoff]

Time does not exist. The future does not exist, as it did not happen yet. The past does not exist, as if you could go into the past, it did not pass.

For further details, see my web page:
http://www.analysis-knowledge.com/msgTeaching.htm
Scroll down to the sentences: ""Time Does Not Exist, and the Incompleteness of Knowledge"
Current physical theory is that time does not exist. This paper gives simple clarifications of this idea. It incudes a discussion of God."

 

[Kenny_L]

Time does not exist. The future does not exist, as it did not happen yet. The past does not exist, as if you could go into the past, it did not pass.

Time does exist...it is a working construct that actually is demonstrated to be useful/practical in our society. The future does exist, because if you're still thinking in 1 second from now, then obviously you can assume that there is a future in another 1 second after that...and so on. About that past...well, there's no need to discuss all these things much more, because past, present, and future are all defined in the dictionary anyway. So if you have trouble understanding these definitions, then please consult the dictionary.

 

[robheus]

The "why" question does not make any sense. There is no "why does the universe exist" question to be raised, because there can (by definition) not be any reason for the existence of the universe, neither an (outside) cause.

 

[LightbulbSun]

The "why" question is implying that the universe has human like motives. It's very easy for people to reflect human qualities onto physical phenomena, also known as the Pathetic Fallacy. There's only how, and not why. Asking why is a pointless question.

 

[baywax]

Its obvious already that the universe is here for two reasons. One: to construct me. Two: to make beer for me.

 

[robertm]

You are all wrong, Clickith to findith twhat' truth be!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWGJ3ydBQiE

Welcome to existence.

 

[WaveJumper]

Why the universe exists is a good question, but i'd put the emphasis on why we exist.

First RNA --> Single cell organism --> Multicellular organism --> Fish --> Reptile --> Mammal --> Ape --> Hominid --> Homo sapiens --> ...


To me, this sequence looks like a path to somewhere and the three dots after homo sapiens would mean -- Superhuman --> God

Teleporting, transcending our physical existence in a digital or some energy form, all these scream becoming God to me. IMO if we survive as species, it'd be inevitable that we become gods. That's why there is something instead of nothing. Hail the future gods, while they are not extinct.

 

[AFG34]

I believe someday we will.

 

[WaveJumper]

What is the universe? A superposition of states that decohere? With no movement at the quantum level but just changing the state from one to the other? What we see as reality and a continuous process is simply due to the coarseness of our observatory apparatus. I am not positive that these superpositional states of the universe that are not yet decohered, exist outside of our minds at all.

 

[canadmonster]

i was just going to post a thread on where does matter come from. I guess this is the right topic. Anyone have an answer? For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. but some place in time something was created from nothing.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Why? There is no why. There exists a universe during every Age of Kali.

ॐ​

 

[sirchasm]

I'm currently involved in something of a logic stoush, with someone who claims to be a mathematician (studying string theory). The discussion has prompted me to pose the following questions about logic, the nature of "real and imaginary", and the nature of the infinite.

Q: Is logic imaginary, or real?
A: We imagine logic, and also believe that it really is "logical" - that it stands up despite our attempts to push it over, or "stress-test" logical arguments.

Q: Are numbers real or imaginary?
A: We imagine numbers, and we imagine that real actual events and objects have real values. Imaginary numbers are a logical classification of 'numbers', but we cannot show that numbers exist in actuality, except by 'projecting' them - onto paper, or just onto a logical process, which is entirely a product of our brains

Q: Is infinity real?
A: Infinity is as real as any number we imagine (i.e. it's really imaginary). We imagine it's always beyond any number we can count up to.
We can count 'backwards', so negative numbers are real in the sense that 'real subtraction' exists.
Because -1 is really a number, and a square root really exists for it, then i is a number too; it's classified as imaginary (it's an 'imaginary number' because we have to imagine 'real numbers' that we can assign to actual events and objects).

Infinity is a number we can't 'count to', in the same sense we can't see beyond the most distant objects in any direction, but can imagine that 'most distant we can see' is not actually the most distant, there are objects we can never see beyond the ones we can. Infinity really logically exists then. Mathematically of course, 'real' numbers are a logical classification.

Try telling a mathematician that all the numbers they can think of, are imaginary.
Of course they are; where do numbers really exist? In the imagination of logical minds, which reside in real brains. This guy keeps mistaking logically 'real' with actually real.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

sirchasm, you might be interested in this thread from earlier in the year: [thread=215118]The Question : is mathematics discovered or invented?[/thread]

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[Chrisc]

42

I'll have a Guinness please.

 

[a2tha3]

If it doesn't transform us all into a black hole, wheeeeeee!.



http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/27/823924.aspx

Hahaha... right. You do know that if it does transform into a black hole no one is going to notice it. It will be massive...for it's size, but it wouldn't transform US into a black hole, nor would it transform anything except the mazons into a black hole.

Back to the topic.

Of course we will understand WHY the universe exists. Now some may argue that "why" is arbitrarily a human creation, and thus doesn't apply to all mechanical reasoning; however I postulate that anything with a mechanical reasoning also has a philosophical reasoning after you understand the mechanical reasoning itself. Existence is where this gets relatively tricky.

The definition of "why" was defined earlier in this discussion as "what reason for," or "for what reason?," For what reason does anything exist? It exists because (if you believe in evolution) because of evolution, and or (in the case of technology) a sentient being "invented" it, or it is essentially the result of something (an event) prior. ZZzzzz I have to go but I will finish my thought when I have time. (It sounds like I'm explaining determinism hahaha)

 

[baywax]

Will humans ever really understand why the universe exists?

What universe?

Or rather, which universe?

 

[WaveJumper]

Nice article on the existence of the universe from the Guardian by Paul Davies - a physicist in the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University, Sydney


"So the bottom line is this. Once we go far enough down the multiverse route, all bets are off. Reality goes into the melting pot, and there is no reason to believe we are living in anything but a Matrix-style simulation. Science is then reduced to a charade, because the simulators of our world - whoever or whatever they are - can create any pseudo-laws they please, and keep changing them."



http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/sep/23/spaceexploration.comment

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Science is then reduced to a charade, because the simulators of our world - whoever or whatever they are - can create any pseudo-laws they please, and keep changing them.

Interesting link, but I don't think that science is predicated on any idea that the laws of physics never change or are necessarily predictable. Look at how easily some adopt the notion that quantum phenomena are non-deterministic - yet no one considers sub-atomic physics to be a charade.

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[WaveJumper]

Interesting link, but I don't think that science is predicated on any idea that the laws of physics never change or are necessarily predictable. Look at how easily some adopt the notion that quantum phenomena are non-deterministic - yet no one considers sub-atomic physics to be a charade.

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True randomness makes as much sense to me as infinity, zero and nothingness. My mind can't picture a true uncaused random event. I always get a headache, it's like trying to figure out why 2+2=5 in a universe that's built around the law that 2+2=4.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

True randomness makes as much sense to me as infinity, zero and nothingness. My mind can't picture a true uncaused random event. I always get a headache, it's like trying to figure out why 2+2=5 in a universe that's built around the law that 2+2=4.

Zero does not make sense to you? Try telling the waiter that when your credit card gets denied.

It must be impossible for you to imagine a beginning to the universe, which would necessitate an uncaused event.

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[WaveJumper]

Zero does not make sense to you? Try telling the waiter that when your credit card gets denied.

HAHA, I'll slip him a scientific explanation - "Don't worry pal, the money is stored into a zero-dimensional singularity and will reappear out of nothingness. Wait for the uncaused event".

It must be impossible for you to imagine a beginning to the universe, which would necessitate an uncaused event.

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I don't believe in miracles but then energy turning to consciousness that has the capability to observe other energy continuously turning to consciouness is considered "natural", so i am lost what is miracle and what is not. The whole thing with our existence and something out of nothing makes as much sense as 5/0. BTW, this forbidden mathematical operation describes the origin of the universe pretty well.

 

[Petradog]

This is quite late to your thread and I don't want to start a new one so:

Just because the big bang happened doesn't mean there really wasn't time or space before it. I think that things were much denser in the past, but does everyone agree that both time and space were still existent at the time of -14 BYA?

I think that both time and space are certainly infinite, and that there actually was a "time" "before" the big bang. We are onlly limited to our solar system, wouldn't it be great if we could test laws of physics in another solar system or galaxy?

I don't think we're ever going to understand why the universe exists, let alone how it was made from the beginning.

The reason is because there with certainty was no beginning. There will also be no end. Perhaps this is what makes it a truly virtual computer that could either be very small or very large, but we have no idea cause we can't zoom out far enough can we?

Do you believe me? Does my assumption seem the most probable reality?

 

[Pythagorean]

you forgot the poll option "This question is meaningless outside of human thinking"

 

[Jacob Perry]

Asking why the universe exists is like asking why we care. We just do and we don't like to not know things. I don't think humans know as much as they think they know about the universe. I understand that in this since, you mean how does the universe exist. This is limited to definition of existence. The universe has things we classify as living and not living so maybe it does but doesn't exist. Maybe some things we have pinned as living, plants for example, are not living at all. Existence is an impossible thing to grasp no matter how hard you try.

 

[p764rds]

Yes, we will understand why the Universe exists because the universe made us and we could make a Universe ourselves soon. We are clever enough (well, not all of you out there..) it needs quantum computers and a knowledge of logic to put together a consistent system and that is a Universe.
The Universe was created with 'intelligence' of some sort and we have the same sort of intellegence ourselves.

At the most basic level the Universe is a gigantic sea of moving numbers (actually data) and we live in this sea. It has no mass, no particles and no size - just numbers. Its not hard to replace a sea of atoms with a sea of numbers in our minds, just need to remove 3D space as well. Mathematics does not need space-time (plato knew that).

The numbers create an illusion of space and matter and fields - and, of course, a very good illusion.

eg 2109809830291830912 processed with 948572938759384 results in 39847392874293874 - its a rule.

The numbers are an intelligent design which we ourselves are capable of doing. We could already get a reasonable first draft design for a shaky Universe.

 

[Blenton]

Possibly, but not probable with our current physiology. I'd say we would have to evolve further than we are now, getting rid of useless instincts, increase brain capacity. That or integrate our minds to computers.

 

[Brilliant!]

Evolution doesn't guarantee "increased brain capacity". Evolution simply favors those characteristics that are suited for a certain environment. If anything, I would count on some type of mental devolving. Life's luxuries and the laziness they afford make for a pretty safe and mediocre existence. Mental giants are the minority by their very nature, so "average" and "mediocre" are the words you can use to describe the bulk of the people who procreate.

Of course, I'm generalizing like crazy here, so feel free to unconsider what I've said.

I like Juan Enriquez's idea of "Homo Evolutis". Basically, as a species we have reached the end of significant, natural evolution. But that's nothing to be worried about. Because, though we may be reaching the end of our evolutionary track, we have the mental power to continue artificial evolution. We are now "Homo Evolutis", a species capable of their own evolution.

Here's an interesting vid on the idea: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_new_science.html

 

[p764rds]

I like Juan Enriquez's idea of "Homo Evolutis". Basically, as a species we have reached the end of significant, natural evolution. But that's nothing to be worried about. Because, though we may be reaching the end of our evolutionary track, we have the mental power to continue artificial evolution. We are now "Homo Evolutis", a species capable of their own evolution.

Here's an interesting vid on the idea: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_new_science.html

Computers to my way of thinking are just as evolutionary as biological stuff like me and you. They are 'growing' just like we grew.

 

[Brilliant!]

Computers to my way of thinking are just as evolutionary as biological stuff like me and you. They are 'growing' just like we grew.

Exponentially and inorganically?

If you segregate technology and view it alone, its path certainly does represent a type of evolution, but it's only similar to ours insofar as evolution's basic characteristics are considered. To be a little cheesy, I would call it e-Volution.