It's a theory but....

[Joseph C.]

This is way off-topic but perhaps someone might indulge me. It has been bugging me for sometime now, several months actually.

If the Universe is flat (which it is), a 2D structure, doesn't logic dictate that everything in it, including ourselves, are also two-dimensional?

Does this not bother anyone? :? Can someone get their head around this?

 

[TPA]

doesn't logic dictate that everything in it, including ourselves, are also two-dimensional?

YES! I can finally get off this freaking diet!

 

[John in CR]

Time seems to have distorted my 2 dimensional belly into the 3rd dimension.

 

[oldpiper]

This is way off-topic but perhaps someone might indulge me. It has been bugging me for sometime now, several months actually.

If the Universe is flat (which it is), a 2D structure, doesn't logic dictate that everything in it, including ourselves, are also two-dimensional?

Does this not bother anyone? :? Can someone get their head around this?

You're thinking "flat" looking from 3-D to 2-D, like if you were in a 2-D world, you would think "flat" going down to 1-D (a line, anyone here read "Flatland" as a kid?). What the cosmologists are describing is going from a 4-D universe, looking at it in 3-D. Simply put, the definition of "flat" here is that two lines which are absolutely parallel for a short distance (i.e., as far as you could see them), will never cross or splay (converge or diverge) as they travel out to infinity. So, we are on the 3-D "equilavent" of a pool table. There are other possible geometries (which so far don't seem to be the case), the two most commonly thought of which would be the 3-D equivalent of the surface of a ball or a potato chip (saddle). I can't remember which case would make those same parallel lines converge or diverge, but it doesn't matter, since neither seems to be "real" (for a physicist's definition of "real").

Cameron

 

[spinningmagnets]

If the universe was even just "relatively" flat, wouldn't all the stars be near inline?

Einstein married his second cousin, so with love, as in physics,...sometimes its relative?

 

[etard]

Here's a helpful thread:

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=30175&hilit=matrix

 

[Joseph C.]

You're thinking "flat" looking from 3-D to 2-D, like if you were in a 2-D world, you would think "flat" going down to 1-D (a line, anyone here read "Flatland" as a kid?). What the cosmologists are describing is going from a 4-D universe, looking at it in 3-D. Simply put, the definition of "flat" here is that two lines which are absolutely parallel for a short distance (i.e., as far as you could see them), will never cross or splay (converge or diverge) as they travel out to infinity. So, we are on the 3-D "equilavent" of a pool table. There are other possible geometries (which so far don't seem to be the case), the two most commonly thought of which would be the 3-D equivalent of the surface of a ball or a potato chip (saddle). I can't remember which case would make those same parallel lines converge or diverge, but it doesn't matter, since neither seems to be "real" (for a physicist's definition of "real").

Cameron

Not exactly, I'm leaning more towards flat as in the Holographic principle flat. I heard of this several years ago but it was at a Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) thing which I would later learn was completely bullshit - don't get me started on fire-walking. I didn't give it any further thought until this week - when I looked a bit more into the flat thing.

If I can get my hands on Horizon's 'What Is Reality?' I would be partly sorted - missed that boat, I'm afraid. I know experiments are/were being carried out to find out if space-time is stagnant at a very detailed level. If it is - then we, and everything in the Universe, are a hologram. This of course means that we are not alive.

 

[oldpiper]

Not exactly, I'm leaning more towards flat as in the Holographic principle flat. I heard of this several years ago but it was at a Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) thing which I would later learn was completely bullshit - don't get me started on fire-walking. I didn't give it any further thought until this week - when I looked a bit more into the flat thing.

If I can get my hands on Horizon's 'What Is Reality?' I would be partly sorted - missed that boat, I'm afraid. I know experiments are/were being carried out to find out if space-time is stagnant at a very detailed level. If it is - then we, and everything in the Universe, are a hologram. This of course means that we are not alive.

I'm OK with that, "Flatland" with a bit more math. But the physicists are talking about a representation of the contents of a volume of space encoded on its outside surface, not that the contents really exist only on the surface. And here, there's nothing in HP about stagnation, the surface can and will change as the volume inside does. IIRC, there is a quantum unit (read smallest unit) of time, maybe Planck time, which you might say implies a "stagnant" space-time. But this doesn't have anything to do with life. Living things can be broadly defined as "objects far from equilibrium," which implies change through time, even if it has to proceed through teeny-tiny jumps. As for what your particular life means, that's a matter for a different discipline, not physics. Remember, the HP involves observing the object (the Universe) from the outside, so you can see its surface. This will be a difficult experiment, at least in the near future.

 

[Joseph C.]

I'm OK with that, "Flatland" with a bit more math. But the physicists are talking about a representation of the contents of a volume of space encoded on its outside surface, not that the contents really exist only on the surface. And here, there's nothing in HP about stagnation, the surface can and will change as the volume inside does. IIRC, there is a quantum unit (read smallest unit) of time, maybe Planck time, which you might say implies a "stagnant" space-time. But this doesn't have anything to do with life. Living things can be broadly defined as "objects far from equilibrium," which implies change through time, even if it has to proceed through teeny-tiny jumps. As for what your particular life means, that's a matter for a different discipline, not physics. Remember, the HP involves observing the object (the Universe) from the outside, so you can see its surface. This will be a difficult experiment, at least in the near future.

I'm afraid I'm even more confused now!

The latest I read, can't remember where about the experiment to show if we are part of a hologram or not predicts that it will fail. We simply don't have technology with a high enough resolution yet and the scientist in question is supposed to have underestimated the sensitivity required.

I think I am more enlightened now, with the aid of your posts, oldpiper.

 

[oldpiper]

Well, don't worry about the details, just try to get the gestalt of the arguments. The big picture stuff is the important thing. When your head starts hurting, take a break for a bit.

And I was being a bit facetious about the "experiment" of looking at the universe from outside. No one, AFAIK, has any idea at all how to do it.

Cameron

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

the first attosecond of the big bang violated the laws of thermodynamics.
it also violated the speed of light.

two men say they're jesus, one of them must be wrong.
it's either the big bang theory or thermodynamic law that has to get the boot.
what say u loverofphysiques?

 

[oldpiper]

the first attosecond of the big bang violated the laws of thermodynamics.

I'm not sure about that. Seems to me a release of a lot of energy and a really big increase in entropy (disorder). This would lead to a spontaneous "reaction."

it also violated the speed of light.

IMHO, I think the physicists are wrong about this one, but I haven't gathered all the numbers together just yet. Give me another few months on this.

two men say they're jesus, one of them must be wrong.
it's either the big bang theory or thermodynamic law that has to get the boot.
what say u loverofphysiques?

Love that Freudian slip there.

Cameron