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Multiple Universes

BunksBunks Australia Veteran
Apparently astronomers have recently discovered evidence that there may be other universes out there.

I only caught a small portion of a documentary about it but they were effectively saying that they have pointed super powerful lasers out towards objects on the edge of the universe with an expectation that the reflection would come back in a certain way but it doesn't.

They have started to draw the conclusion that the laws of physics present in our universe aren't present in this part of space. Hence, it is a different universe.

I don't pretend to understand much of this stuff but it is pretty exciting I think.

Did the Buddha talk about "the ten fold universe"? What did he mean?
futurenetsEvenThirdcvalue

Comments

  • I don't see how it could get back to them due to the slow travel of light (relatively slow). Light from far away star systems shows us what was there like 180 light years ago and so forth.
    blu3ree
  • DavidDavid A human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First Nations Veteran
    What we perceive to be the universe may be flawed but there is not more than one universe. There cannot be more than one "all that exists anywhere".

  • ourself said:

    What we perceive to be the universe may be flawed but there is not more than one universe. There cannot be more than one "all that exists anywhere".

    I think string theory is also opening up new ways of looking at the universe
  • also youtube Brian Greene - lots of good stuff
  • ChazChaz The Remarkable Chaz Anywhere, Everywhere & Nowhere Veteran
    Because we don't see things "as they are", then I suppose that we don't see the Universe as it is. Just because we can't detect it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just because we have yet to "find" a parallel universe doesn't mean that one, or more, isn't out there, somewhere.

    Oftentimes we mistake the limits of our knowledge as the limit of what is knowable.
    EvenThirdcvalue
  • DavidDavid A human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First Nations Veteran

    ourself said:

    What we perceive to be the universe may be flawed but there is not more than one universe. There cannot be more than one "all that exists anywhere".

    I think string theory is also opening up new ways of looking at the universe
    Yes, but not more than one universe.
    Chaz said:

    Because we don't see things "as they are", then I suppose that we don't see the Universe as it is. Just because we can't detect it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just because we have yet to "find" a parallel universe doesn't mean that one, or more, isn't out there, somewhere.

    Oftentimes we mistake the limits of our knowledge as the limit of what is knowable.

    For there to be more than one universe we would have to change what the word means. Even if there are many big bangs, there can still only be the one universe.

  • DavidDavid A human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First Nations Veteran
    Bunks said:

    Apparently astronomers have recently discovered evidence that there may be other universes out there.

    I only caught a small portion of a documentary about it but they were effectively saying that they have pointed super powerful lasers out towards objects on the edge of the universe with an expectation that the reflection would come back in a certain way but it doesn't.

    They have started to draw the conclusion that the laws of physics present in our universe aren't present in this part of space. Hence, it is a different universe.

    I don't pretend to understand much of this stuff but it is pretty exciting I think.

    Did the Buddha talk about "the ten fold universe"? What did he mean?

    It wouldn't be a different universe, but it could mean the universe didn't start at the big bang. I don't think it did anyways. I'm pretty sure the big bang is a function of the universe and not the beginning.

  • ourself said:

    I'm pretty sure the big bang is a function of the universe and not the beginning.

    I do believe there are multiple universe, an infinite number probably. I think of it like soap bubbles forming and bursting over and over again. Maybe The Universe spawns smaller universes by singularities. Maybe it's like the way some microbes reproduce by budding (yeasts) or fission (amoebas and bacteria). They come into existence, maybe they reproduce, maybe they die. Maybe we're inside a gigantic bacterium. :hair: Or maybe I'm over-thinking this. :lol:
  • BunksBunks Australia Veteran
    Thanks everyone.

    I was actually able to find the narrative from the program I was referring to. It's called Catalyst and it's a science show on Australian television.

    Here is the relevant part I was referring to:

    Professor John Webb
    The physical equations that we've been using for many years now all make the assumption that physics is the same everywhere and always has been the same, but it is an assumption.

    NARRATION
    Could the laws vary from place to place? Tantalisingly, John Webb and his colleagues have found clues this could be true. They pointed powerful telescopes at bizarre objects out at the edge of the universe - quasars. They're massive black holes perhaps a billion times heavier than the sun. They beam out brilliant radiation, like torches pointing at us from the edge of the universe.

    Professor John Webb
    They're very bright point sources of light which we can use as beacons of light, shining through the universe and illuminating anything that gets in the way.

    NARRATION
    When a cloud of matter gets in the way, the matter absorbs specific colours of the quasar light, causing those missing black bands. Now, if the laws of physics are the same everywhere, the bands should have the same pattern no matter where in the universe the quasar is.

    Professor John Webb
    And we found something that we didn't expect to find. So they change depending upon where you look in the universe.

    Dr Graham Phillips
    Yeah, I mean, that's quite remarkable. I mean, standard physics says that those absorption lines should be the same everywhere.

    Professor John Webb
    That's right. That's what standard physics says. It doesn't seem to be what we're seeing.

    Dr Graham Phillips
    That's pretty exciting stuff.

    Professor John Webb
    If it's right, it's very exciting, actually, yes.

    NARRATION
    Very exciting because it would be the first evidence the laws of physics are not set in stone, and so would at least open the door for the multiverse. But if the multiverse exists, it causes some serious conundrums, because it means there is a lot of space out there.

    Associate Professor Charley Lineweaver
    Well, as a matter of fact, the current data is consistent with our universe being spatially infinite, going on forever and ever and ever, and we're just seeing a small part of it. And over here there's another universe, and over here there's another universe.

    NARRATION
    And if there's infinite space, even the most unlikely things are bound to happen somewhere.

    Associate Professor Charley Lineweaver
    Anything that's possible will happen, right?

    NARRATION
    Lawrence Krauss puts it starkly.

    Professor Lawrence Krauss
    Once you get to infinity, all sorts of weird things happen, 'cause if there are an infinite number of universes over an infinite amount of time, then it means that there are an infinite number of universes that seem like ours, and in fact there are some universes in which I'm sitting there asking you the questions and you're sitting there asking me the questions. So they're almost the same, but there are other universes that are precisely the same, where everything that happens to us now is repeated an infinite number of times. There are also universes where you and I and everything we see pop into existence, via the laws of quantum mechanics, one second ago.
  • ChazChaz The Remarkable Chaz Anywhere, Everywhere & Nowhere Veteran
    ourself said:



    For there to be more than one universe we would have to change what the word means. Even if there are many big bangs, there can still only be the one universe.

    Interesting ......

    If we can't call it a "parallel universe" what would you call it?

    It could be like this:?

    I once read that if the totality of light was represented by the Empire State Building, the part of the spectrum we can see is about one floor.

    That means what we can actually "see" is pretty limited. There might be a lot more to the Universe than what we can actually see. It may seem like an alternate universe, but it's actually just a part of the one that we already know about.



  • It's named a different universe I guess because the laws of physics are different.
  • howhow Veteran Veteran
    OK but does believing that kaleidoscopic universes might be sharing the same time and space with us change anything in your world.
  • Crazy as this sounds, I believe universes intersect. I can hardly believe that every time someone almost walked into me, or I walked into them without noticing can be attributed to not paying attention. This is something Michio Kaku also said. One explanation I recently heard for deja vu is that they are tiny seizures that are an evolutionary holdover from something. Huh? :wtf: I think they may be echoes of something that occurred or are occurring elsewhere.
  • Crazy as this sounds, I believe universes intersect. I can hardly believe that every time someone almost walked into me, or I walked into them without noticing can be attributed to not paying attention. This is something Michio Kaku also said. One explanation I recently heard for deja vu is that they are tiny seizures that are an evolutionary holdover from something. Huh? :wtf: I think they may be echoes of something that occurred or are occurring elsewhere.

    Best left up to the scientists to write a paper on. Or for idling away a few moments in day dreams.
    If you start to believe in such things, without any proof, you are moving away from seeing things as they are.
    BunksEvenThird
  • Perhaps, but Einstein came up with his theory of relativity by musing on a clock tower while riding public transportation. I'm no smarter than the average bear, and have no delusions or designs on becoming a theoretical physicist, but iirc most of the theoretical physicists got started in their careers by making hypotheses. Some hypotheses could be tested and lent themselves to becoming theories, others became dead ends because they couldn't be tested. But we don't know how things really are anyway wrt to the material and phenomenal world. We have no proof of dark matter or dark energy either. Even though it's currently an untestable hypothesis, and its existence only inferred, it's pretty much accepted by the scientific community. "My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." - J.B.S. Haldane
  • DavidDavid A human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First Nations Veteran
    edited October 2013
    Chaz said:

    ourself said:



    For there to be more than one universe we would have to change what the word means. Even if there are many big bangs, there can still only be the one universe.

    Interesting ......

    If we can't call it a "parallel universe" what would you call it?

    It could be like this:?

    I once read that if the totality of light was represented by the Empire State Building, the part of the spectrum we can see is about one floor.

    That means what we can actually "see" is pretty limited. There might be a lot more to the Universe than what we can actually see. It may seem like an alternate universe, but it's actually just a part of the one that we already know about.



    Exactly. It can't mean there is more than one universe but it can mean the universe is way more vast than we even thought. What we presently call a universe would be more aptly called a sub-universe or something like that. We can call the universe a multiverse if we want but we'd be confusing the terms because there is not more than one "all that exists anywhere".

    I do believe the universe is a multiverse but because "universe" means all that exists anywhere, we can put all the so-called universes in one multiverse but we are actually just making the universe bigger. The universe would already include any and all big bangs.

    I think an alternate (sub)universe would have to do with timelines that all lead back to the same big bang.



  • DavidDavid A human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First Nations Veteran
    edited November 2013
    I'm watching the movie "The One" with Jet Li. In it, they say there is a multiverse but they are talking about alternate versions of the same universe. Like I said in my last post I think that would mean they all stem from the same big bang.

    If there is more than one big bang going on in the universe and each one has a multitude of alternatives then the universe would have a multitude of multiverses.

    Makes me think of the Mandelbrot Set.
  • I have never heard of the Buddha speak of the 10 fold universe, but 2 nights ago I was contemplating the universe myself. I go with the bubble theory, our universe is on the surface of a bubble, maybe expanding who knows. But there are other bubbles and when they collide big bangs happen. This is what I think anyway.

    BUT at the end of the day, yes it is fun to play with these theories but who is ever going to prove them and what will it change for humanity? zilch
  • Buddha did say:
    “This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.”
    http://thinkexist.com/quotation/this_life_of_separateness_may_be_compared_to_a/296870.html
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