What is Law in an Infinite Universe?
The original post on Slashdot.
Philosophy can grasp at answers all it likes, but there aren’t really ‘laws’ of nature, or of the Universe, Creation or whatever you want to call it.
The Laws of Nature are not so much laws as they are observations by us. Human sees the same thing happen over and over again and after a while it becomes safe to assume that it is going to happen again and so on. Such ‘laws’ are merely a hypothesis being confirmed… again. No guarantee that it is absolutely right, but based on past observations it is very likely to happen again. So we call it a ‘law’ and that’s fair enough. But trying to define absolute laws for a system that’s as large as the Universe is a problem.
I think that if one is to contemplate the absolute functioning of the Universe in hopes of finding a complete explanation, an all-encompassing meaning or a grand unified theory, then you are contemplating a lost cause. Although I am in the minority these days, I believe that the Universe is:
- Infinite in size
- Infinite in time
I reached that conclusion after asking myself:
What happens if you live at the right edge of the Universe, on the leading edge of the Big Bang or some such? Can you fly your spaceship west or something like that until your spaceship reaches the end of the Universe? What happens then? Do you hit a wall? Do you disappear? Do you fall out of the universe? Do you appear on the other side?
Complicated assumptions to be making, so I propose a much simpler one: is there is no edge of the Universe, it just goes on forever.
Now I know what you are thinking: Bob, nothing can be infinite. There must be some limit.* But why? Why a limit? Why is it so important that the Universe have some kind of bounds? Why is it so important to describe it merely as a object which is 93 billion light years wide and 13 billion years old. I don’t buy it. The notion of a size or an age implies a boundary that one might reach if you traveled far enough. I cannot fathom it. A big wall? A chain-link fence? What is at the edge? If you reach the edge of the Universe and something different happens doesn’t that mean you are still in a Universe? If God himself stops you from reaching the edge of the Creation, doesn’t that imply that He lives in some kind of universe too? And if so, what are the boundaries of His universe?
No. It is infinite. There is no end to it and since there is no end, it is impossible to completely define its scope. It is not possible to know about everything in it and as it is infinite in time, it is only possible to understand what it is doing right now as tomorrow it might be doing something different. Given what we’ve seen so far we know that’s not likely, but in maybe 10 billion years the laws of the Universe as we know them will be different. Infinite time and space means infinite possibilities.
Hawking asked, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” The Universe only as we observe it right now. That’s what the numbers describe. When the equations work out nicely it is because we have done a good job of figuring out how stuff works where we exist and when we exist. Tomorrow, or maybe 10 billion years from now, those equations might not be any good. But now, right now, they work and help us move forward and that’s good. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow, things might fall up, all the time, every day, making it obvious to any scientist that a new law should be declared.
I know it might seem like a terrible, defeatist idea, to never be able to fully understand or discover all of the Universe, but think of the upside. If the Universe is infinite in scope, there is an infinite amount of cool stuff to discover. And what is wrong with that?
* An astrophysicist might be inclined to posit that if the universe was infinite in size there would be an infinite number of radiation sources and the Earth would be bombarded with an infinite amount of radiation. At the very least the night sky would be white, what for all the stars. To this I simply reply, “do we fully understand radiation?” I mean honestly, do we? And by the way, what does all that dark energy and dark matter do?
This retired systems scientist & engineer (Lockheed 1958-1987) agrees with you completely and has a new theory posted on the internet thst proves it for both of us– for himself at least, so far
Comment by lfmorgan — 2007/12/20 @ 12:34
It makes more sense to me that the universe is infinite than that it has a boundary – for what exists beyond the boundary? Nothing? It is easier to conceive of an infinite “somethingness” than an infinite “nothingness”.
If there is something beyond the “chain link fence” perhaps it’s just all the socks that got lost in the dryer and helium balloons that floated away.
Comment by Nancy — 2007/12/20 @ 13:47
Or it’s where all the deleted spam emails go. That’s proof right there the Universe is infinite!
Even if there is nothing, as in no matter or energy, if you could go there with your spaceship or whatever it would still be someplace, subject to certain behaviors and what not. In my books, that makes it just another part of the Universe.
None of this is to say that the observable universe isn’t x light-years wide, that G isn’t G (right now) or that the big bang didn’t happen. All it is saying is that these things must have existed in a place that must have, always did and always will exist.
Comment by cobolhacker — 2007/12/20 @ 20:50