Is Nature playing fair with Krauss Object?

[MigL]

One or two centuries BC, a vast store house of information, hoarded by Ptolemaic kings, supposedly burned to the ground **.
This accumulated ancient knowledge was lost for over a thousand years, due to an accident of nature, and only began rediscovery during the Renaissance, 1500 years later. Was that nature being unfair ?
Knowledge is conclusions drawn from observational evidence.
If one type of evidence is unavailable, you look for another, or you make do without.
In the 'Krauss' future, there may be no more distant receding galaxies, but every once in a while, one of the galaxies in our local group ( or even individual stars ) will wander far enough to lose gravitational cohesion and will experience expansion. It will certainly be harder to formulate a Big Bang model, but it will be possible.

**The Library of Alexandria didn't actually burn to the ground, that is a myth.
    It actually started declining with a purge of intellectuals about the 1st century BC.

[michel123456]

11 hours ago, Strange said:

That implies that general relativity, quantum theory and most of thermodynamics are wrong, just for starters. 

Can you provide any evidence for your beliefs? Or is this a kind of religious thing: not letting the facts get in the way.

No, I have no evidence.

is this a kind of religious belief? It is that kind of feeling I get when something is wrong. The same feeling that I get when someone lies to me. It is very uncomfortable. I cannot swallow a Universe with exactly the same physics as today but made up of only one galaxy. Simply because it is older.

Hopefully, in support of my "belief" we may in the future observe objects insanely older than 13 billion years, and close to us. Something like https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-star-that-s-older-than-the-universe/ar-AAFmyI9

Here again, read this: (bold text enhanced by me)
 

Quote

 

While we don't live in a special place in the universe, we do live in a special time in the universe. In the distant future, billions or even trillions of years from now, galaxies will be flying away from us so quickly that their light will never reach us. The cosmic background microwave radiation will be redshifted so far that it's completely undetectable.

Future astronomers will have no idea that there was ever a greater cosmology beyond the Milky Way itself. The evidence of the Big Bang and the ongoing expansion of the universe will be lost forever.

If we didn't happen to live when we do now, within billions of years of the beginning of the universe, we'd never know the truth.

We can't feel special about our place in the universe, it's probably the same wherever you go. But we can feel special about our time in the universe. Future astronomers will never understand the cosmology and history of the cosmos the way we do now.

 

When I read this, I feel as being still in the middle ages. It is HUGE, it is a lie. We cannot laugh at the infantile belief of the Earth as the center of the universe & accept the exact  same thing about time. It just cannot be that way.

[pzkpfw]

Right now our Moon is the "right" distance from Earth to cause (sometimes) a full eclipse of the Sun.

But its distance from Earth is changing; people at another time won't see eclipses the way we do now.

Is that "fair"? Is it a "trick"? Neither.

 

May as well say it's amazing that the number 73 is where it is, on the infinite integer number line.

 

Edited June 22, 2020 by pzkpfw

[Strange]

1 hour ago, michel123456 said:

is this a kind of religious belief? It is that kind of feeling I get when something is wrong. The same feeling that I get when someone lies to me. It is very uncomfortable. I cannot swallow a Universe with exactly the same physics as today but made up of only one galaxy. Simply because it is older.

The entire reason for the scientific method, with its reliance on objective measurements, testable predictions and blinded trials is to eliminate (or minimize) this sort of personal bias.

 

[joigus]

Is Nature playing fair with hereditary cancer?

No. It's not Nature's job to be fair. Nature looks sometimes fair, sometimes unfair to us. It's our job to make up for her misdeeds.

Maybe we can trick her. I hope we can. Those are half of the better angels of our nature. The other half is being "humane."

Nature's trying to understand herself from the disadvantage point of primates' brains.

That's my two cents.

[dimreepr]

4 hours ago, pzkpfw said:

May as well say it's amazing that the number 73 is where it is, on the infinite integer number line.

FYI, It's 42... 😉

27 minutes ago, joigus said:

Nature's trying to understand herself from the disadvantage point of primates' brains.

Don't Panic (don't panic)... 😝

Edited June 22, 2020 by dimreepr

[joigus]

5 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Don't Panic... 😝

That's easy to say for a skeleton wrapped in a tunic with a sickle in one hand. 😭

[dimreepr]

6 minutes ago, joigus said:

That's easy to say for a skeleton wrapped in a tunic with a sickle in one hand. 😭

When I commissioned it, I was playing poker...

 

[swansont]

5 hours ago, michel123456 said:

No, I have no evidence.

!

Moderator Note

Then it's really not a topic for discussion on a science site.

 

[zapatos]

7 hours ago, michel123456 said:

When I read this, I feel as being still in the middle ages. It is HUGE, it is a lie. We cannot laugh at the infantile belief of the Earth as the center of the universe & accept the exact  same thing about time. It just cannot be that way.

They are NOT the exact same things.

You are confusing the word "special" with the word "preferred".

We don't laugh at the the idea of the Earth being in a special place, we laugh at the idea that the Earth might be in a preferred place.

When you were but a wee child and your mother said you were "her special boy", she simply meant you held some significance for her. You were 'neat', or 'cool'. She wasn't implying that the universe was centered on you.

Similarly, we live in a special time and place. We witnessed the first time humans detected gravity waves and the invention of the autostereogram. If we weren't at this location (on Earth) at this time, we could not have seen that with our own eyes. Unfortunately we did not exist at that special time when the four fundamental forces were combined, but we are lucky to live at the special time when all these superclusters can be detected. And that is really neat.

 

[michel123456]

19 hours ago, zapatos said:

we are lucky to live at the special time when all these superclusters can be detected

I am really baffled by the fact that you don't recognize the flaw in this statement. To me it is so evident that I struggle to find what kind of evidence is needed. Of course we are not "lucky", and of course we don't live in a "special time".

Or at least that shouldn't be a requirement for explaining the Universe.

And when this requirement appears, it should ring a bell. Not a bell exactly, something like an atomic bomb.

[swansont]

24 minutes ago, michel123456 said:

I am really baffled by the fact that you don't recognize the flaw in this statement. To me it is so evident that I struggle to find what kind of evidence is needed. Of course we are not "lucky", and of course we don't live in a "special time".

You could have had this discussion, easily and with people on different continents, if you had been born 100 years earlier? That’s not a fortunate happenstance? 

[michel123456]

36 minutes ago, swansont said:

You could have had this discussion, easily and with people on different continents, if you had been born 100 years earlier? That’s not a fortunate happenstance? 

I don't think that the universe behaves like the humans.

When humans believed that they were in a central spatial point of the universe, they were wrong.

Now we believe that we are in a central point in time between a hot dense state & a freezing end. We must be wrong.

[swansont]

7 minutes ago, michel123456 said:

I don't think that the universe behaves like the humans.

Who is claiming otherwise?

Quote

When humans believed that they were in a central spatial point of the universe, they were wrong.

Now we believe that we are in a central point in time between a hot dense state & a freezing end. We must be wrong.

I think you are misinterpreting the statements about being lucky. I think you’re erecting a strawman so you can complain about things that a scientist said.

zapatos was right.

1 hour ago, michel123456 said:

I am really baffled by the fact that you don't recognize the flaw in this statement. To me it is so evident that I struggle to find what kind of evidence is needed. Of course we are not "lucky", and of course we don't live in a "special time".

Or at least that shouldn't be a requirement for explaining the Universe.

And when this requirement appears, it should ring a bell. Not a bell exactly, something like an atomic bomb.

It’s not a requirement. I don’t see where that is implied.

[michel123456]

13 minutes ago, michel123456 said:

That’s not a fortunate happenstance? 

That has to do with randomness.

The question is: are we at a random point in the life of the universe?

Some here seem to say (correct me if I am wrong) that the life of the universe is soooo long that yes, we are at a random point of the universe where it happens what we are observing, between a hot dense state & a freezing end. IOW we are lucky.

I say that it is not the definition of a random point. A random point should not observe this, because all random points should observe roughly the same thing.

Edited June 23, 2020 by michel123456

[zapatos]

4 hours ago, michel123456 said:

I am really baffled by the fact that you don't recognize the flaw in this statement. To me it is so evident that I struggle to find what kind of evidence is needed. Of course we are not "lucky", and of course we don't live in a "special time".

Either you've misunderstood a simple concept, or you are hanging onto the concept of "preferred position" like a dog on a bone to the extent that common sense and reason cannot get you to realize its limited use.

[MigL]

5 hours ago, michel123456 said:

Or at least that shouldn't be a requirement for explaining the Universe.

You are playing a game, and you think that since there are winner, and losers, that game is inherently unfair ???
Who ever said it needs to be fair?

If life had been possible during the hot dense state of the initial universe, they may have skipped Newtonian and GR gravity and gone straight to Quantum Gravity, as observational evidence, at that time, would have led to it.
And they might have the equivalent of Maxwell's equations for the Electroweak force. They would never know ( until much later if they survived the symmetry break ) about the Weak Nuclear and the Electromagnetic forces.
Maybe you think we should be complaining about how unfair it is for us ???

[Strange]

7 hours ago, michel123456 said:

Of course we are not "lucky", and of course we don't live in a "special time".

Agreed. Any people, at any time, might say that. It is a subjective judgement with no value in understanding the cosmos. It is, essentially, meaningless. 

[pzkpfw]

9 hours ago, michel123456 said:

...

I say that it is not the definition of a random point. A random point should not observe this, because all random points should observe roughly the same thing.

Pick a random spot on Earth. Maybe you pick a desert. Or a mountain top. Or the arctic. Or a rain forest.

A single random choice does not have to match any other.

 

The Universe is changing. The particular time we happen to be observing it - we simply see what we see.

Your idea that "all random points should observe roughly the same thing" relies on the Universe being static and unchanging.

 

[Strange]

10 hours ago, michel123456 said:

The question is: are we at a random point in the life of the universe?

Yes.

10 hours ago, michel123456 said:

Some here seem to say (correct me if I am wrong) that the life of the universe is soooo long that yes, we are at a random point of the universe where it happens what we are observing, between a hot dense state & a freezing end. IOW we are lucky.

Saying this is a "lucky" time to be alive is a meaningless, subjective and anthropocentric comment. It is based on one irrelevant aspect of the universe. There is nothing objectively special or lucky about this time. It's the best of times, it's the worst of times. It is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness. It is the epoch of belief, it is the epoch of incredulity. It is the season of Light, it is the season of Darkness. It is the spring of hope, it is the winter of despair. We have everything before us, we have nothing before us.

10 hours ago, michel123456 said:

I say that it is not the definition of a random point. A random point should not observe this, because all random points should observe roughly the same thing.

There is absolutely no reason for that to be true.

It isn't true about the Earth 1 million years ago and the Earth now.

It isn't true about the year I was born and this year.

It isn't even true about yesterday and today.

Things change. Get over it.

[michel123456]

8 hours ago, pzkpfw said:

Pick a random spot on Earth. Maybe you pick a desert. Or a mountain top. Or the arctic. Or a rain forest.

A single random choice does not have to match any other.

 

The Universe is changing. The particular time we happen to be observing it - we simply see what we see.

Your idea that "all random points should observe roughly the same thing" relies on the Universe being static and unchanging.

But then, if you are correct, it goes again the cosmological principle.

From Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle

Quote

The cosmological principle is usually stated formally as 'Viewed on a sufficiently large scale, the properties of the universe are the same for all observers.' This amounts to the strongly philosophical statement that the part of the universe which we can see is a fair sample, and that the same physical laws apply throughout. In essence, this in a sense says that the universe is knowable and is playing fair with scientists.

What means "fair sample" in the above statement, when you seem to be confident that nature does not play "fair"?

Do not forget that a difference in space means a difference in time. Objects that we are currently observing in the sky are in a different time than we are. The far away ones are in a long past.

The cosmological principle depends on a definition of "observer," and contains an implicit qualification and two testable consequences.

From wiki again

Quote

"Observers" means any observer at any location in the universe, not simply any human observer at any location on Earth: as Andrew Liddle puts it, "the cosmological principle [means that] the universe looks the same whoever and wherever you are.

At any location in the universe means also "spread over time", because each location is at a different time.

What you seem to say is that "the universe looks DIFFERENT whoever and wherever you are because the universe is CHANGING" (sorry for putting words in your mouth).

[Strange]

47 minutes ago, michel123456 said:

Do not forget that a difference in space means a difference in time. Objects that we are currently observing in the sky are in a different time than we are. The far away ones are in a long past.

And we see that they were different in the past. (Ultimately, we see all the way back to when the universe was uniformly full of hot plasma)

49 minutes ago, michel123456 said:

At any location in the universe means also "spread over time", because each location is at a different time.

No it doesn’t. It is only talking about locations in space. (Please don’t turn this into yet another thread on your inability to understand the finite speed of light)

[michel123456]

55 minutes ago, Strange said:

And we see that they were different in the past. (Ultimately, we see all the way back to when the universe was uniformly full of hot plasma)

No it doesn’t. It is only talking about locations in space. (Please don’t turn this into yet another thread on your inability to understand the finite speed of light)

I am starting to wonder about your intellectual abilities.

[joigus]

3 hours ago, michel123456 said:

I am starting to wonder about your intellectual abilities.

Please, stay away of ad hominem.

[michel123456]

21 minutes ago, joigus said:

Please, stay away of ad hominem.

OK. I am sorry. And I was wrong: I have no doubt about his intellectual abilities.