goldglow

Nicolaus Copernicus, perhaps, for one. His book, " De revolutionibus orbium coelestium " , a work which first described the Sun, not the earth, as being the centre of the solar system, was not finally published until the day he died on the 7th of May,1543 , because, even though he had finished it years before then , he was too afraid of ridicule or criticism to have it published earlier, as it was almost universally believed then that the Sun orbited the earth. Anyone who goes against the grain of what is widely regarded as undeniable truth will suffer, if those in positions of power or authority, whose position depends on that supposed truth, with their obedient followers, decide that any new ideas are heresy - even if those new ideas are nonsense. However,i would haltingly suggest that true genius, in any field, is as much destructive as it is creative: doing away with something that was wrong ( as did Copernicus) as well as bringing something new and true to light. Again, haltingly, i wouldn't call it predictive clairvoyance: it could only be so if we all had such creative genius as the few who did/do possess it,regardless of when they lived, and could be as creative as them. Humanities' greatest upheavals have, for better or worse, all been through the influence of individuals- Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth, Mohammed, Luther, Henry 8th, Marie Curie, Hitler, Mao, Bill Gates etc etc. I think, also, the word " unique " is important here,too: if something is unique it can never be replicated or repeated, so Shakespeare's poetry, Bach's music, Rembrandt's paintings and Einstein's Theories etc, can't be repeated, so can't really be a prediction of future culture as that future culture can't be of a comparable stature with such as these examples that gone before. The good news? We all have the power of insight ,though, and, to borrow from C.G Jung , each one of us can create our own selves.... regardless of the past or the future.

May i ask, affectionally, have you not just described the birth of a baby? After all, the womb is a life-support system, and new-born babies " come to their senses " at birth. Their reality would, to our thinking, seemingly be very different outside the womb/life-support system but , as a baby has no awareness of it's existence, it cannot compare the old with the new- to it there is only the new, from which the baby learns everything through it's awakened senses. Someone who " comes to their senses " as an adult would just be a very big baby, and go through the same learning experiences from which consciousness arises. They would have no reality before being born; consciousness comes after, not before, birth. It may help us to know that the word "consciousness " comes from the Latin "conscire " or " scire " which means " to know " and we can only gain knowledge through our senses, and we cannot be conscious without our senses being awake, as the centre of consciousness ( the brain ) depends on sensual input in order to function at a normal level. As an example, ask yourself " How do i know the sky is blue ?", or " How do i know ice is cold ? ". Sorry if i sound condescending : i'm bringing you down to my level. Also for the words "own mind " i would substitute the words " own brain " - i think there is a difference. Would you,then, agree that " the inception of physical experience " is just another way of saying " birth " and all that that implies? Perhaps not, but i liked your question anyway.

Fascinating! I imagine, then , that every theory is necessary to point the way forward in what may be a long journey to reaching a Universal certainty, if there is one we can reach. The giant has to stand on someone's shoulders too.

Could we say, then, that each theory is a piece of the same scientific jigsaw that will, we hope, fit together and lead to a complete picture,or are the theories mutually incompatible and each one is the start of a new, separate jigsaw. Or is each new theory like the next rung of a scientific ladder that is essential for the next step to be taken?

Only guesswork, but could it be that the black hole was already 6 or 7 billion light years distant when it was ejected, or is that too simple a solution?

Thanks.

I should also say that " fruitless " can also mean " without success ", as in " a fruitless attempt to find gold " when no gold was found; or as in " a fruitless attempt to climb a mountain " when the attempt failed.

Please forgive me for seeming pedantic. I know you mean sentient/biological life, but i've always thought that Life isn't ON things or IN things, but Life IS things, so Mars itself IS Life, simply by existing, so Life IS there. I think this applies to the whole Universe too, so that Life IS everywhere. Sorry; i'm not trying to be clever - it's just an observation.

Thanks. Checked out the web-link: so many wonderful, erudite theories and educated speculation! So much food for thought! I'm left with only one more question now: among all these complex (to me )studies, are there any facts at all that can be written in stone,or is everything a " best guess " - albeit backed up by painstaking, knowledgeable scholarship?

Can i make a light-hearted case FOR absolute time? Einstein, sitting on a train in Ulm station, was struck by the thought that, if the train left the station at the speed of light, then, to his eyes , the time on the station clock would never change. This doesn't mean that time would stop or slow down,( his cup of tea would still get cold ), as people in the station would see the clock work as normal. However, would someone leaving Ulm on a train at half the speed of light see the clock take longer to change time than those people in the station, but see the clock change time slower than someone leaving the station at a quarter of the speed of light, or would the constant speed of light make the clock move the same for everybody who wasn't travelling as fast as Einstein? In any case, the absolute time by the clock never changes, only the observers relative perception of the clock face changes, which could, for want of a better phrase, be just a trick of the light.

You have almost answered your own question. When you see the suffix " less" , think of it as meaning " without " , so " wireless " means " without wires " and " fruitless " means " without fruit " etc. " Less " placed before a word, but separate from the word, means " fewer " or " not as much " or " not as many ", so then it would be right to say " less wires " if you meant "fewer wires " or " less fruit " if you meant " not as much fruit " etc. " Less " as a separate word can also mean " minus " so you can say " 3 less 2 is1 " or " 4 less 2 is 2 " etc.

Of course - how silly of me:if it was the matter that was continually expanding, as opposed to just naturally growing, perhaps we would all be the size of planets and getting bigger and bigger! Please forgive my lack of knowledge of these things; my questions are not those that a qualified scientist might ask, but i do love science and find this fascinating - bewildering too. So then, if the Universe is governed by the laws of Nature/Science, would it be permissible, in scientific circles, to speak of Universal seasons - the Big Bang being Spring and , as things got cooler, a Universal Winter would eventually and unavoidably follow,leading to such cooling and loss of density that enough momentum would be lost to cause expansion to slow to a halt, perhaps even leading to a contraction back to a new Spring( a sort of Big Collision ) and so ad infinitum? ( As an analogy, ancient philosophers thought of the Universe as breathing in and out over colossal periods of time). Or perhaps so much density would be lost that the Universe/Matter would simply dissipate and we would be back to the "before "? Are these valid, or even sensible questions?

I see: everything is moving away from the same centre, into an empty Universe that was already there before any expansion of matter. Can we answer Alubadi21's question, then, by saying that what was there before the Big Bang was the Universe?

I'm sorry that, as a relative newcomer,( in every sense), i only have questions, not answers; so may i ask if the expansion of the Universe is isotropic? If so, must it not have had a central location from which it evolved, even before the theoretical Big Bang , and therefore a circumference in which everything observable or unobservable is included and homogeneous ,no matter how much this circumference expands?

Thanks,SuperNerd.

Is it then, that the expansion of the Universe is the the only clue we have to any kind of beginning? May i also ask this layman's question: if everything is in a state of acceleration, does this mean that the total mass of the Universe is continually increasing and so the strength of gravitational attraction is also increasing proportionately enough to slow down the acceleration or, conversely, speed up the expansion?

If there was a singularity, would that mean that the total existing mass of the present universe had already existed in expanded form before it was " squeezed " into this singularity?

The fabric of the future universe must have already been contained in the singularity so it must have had some existence before the BB. Can we ask: " Where was the singularity; how it came into being ; how long had it existed before the BB?"