GD: 24 Jun 2009 : 11:45:33 <blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">This is simple:
1) Self-organization of a system is related to the concept of broken symmetry.
2) Broken symmetry is related to irreversibility.
3) irreversibility is the result of a closed system.
Sorry PhilJ I have right. The propagandists are those, with their theories, shy away from reality...<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Those three assertions are hardly axiomatic, GD. I agree that broken symmetry is irreversible in a closed system, and it plays a role in self-organization. Some outside influences can reverse broken symmetries, but not all. Some outside influences can even <b>cause</b> broken symmetries which do not <b>want</b> to be broken. So the presence of a broken symmetry is no proof of a closed system.
What is a closed system, anyway? If it is completely, utterly and perfectly unconnected to anything else, then as far as anyone inside a closed system is concerned, nothing else exists. And as far as anyone on the outside is concerned, the inside doesn't exist, either. There can be no closed system within a greater universe and no greater universe outside a closed system. There can be at most one closed system, and if it exists, then it is the universe.
<hr noshade size="1">GD: 19 Jan 2008 : 00:52:57<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">2)
Light travels the same distance with time, therefore the universe must be a sphere. (it is not infinite for the same reason.)<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">GD: 24 Feb 2008 : 19:05:29 <blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If light travels at a finite speed, then our universe is NOT INFINITE.
the boundary condition is where light has not reached yet.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">You assume that the Hubble sphere is the universe. What about the most distant objects that we see now, as they existed 10 billion years ago? Since that light was emitted, the expansion of space has moved its source to perhaps 50 billion light years away. Are you saying that the source no longer exists because it is outside our Hubble sphere?
If the universe is infinite, then every finite part of it, including our Hubble sphere, is infinitely smaller than the whole. If gravity propagates 20 billion times faster than light, then gravity's sphere of influence defines a sphere (Let's call it the PhilJ sphere unless you know another name for it.) 20 billion times wider than the Hubble sphere (assuming uniform expansion at that range). Even this PhilJ sphere is an infinitely small part of the infinite universe.
If the universe is everything that IS, then, to loosly quote Bill Clinton, "It depends on what the definition of IS is." What lies beyond the PhilJ sphere? Nothing that can affect us physically, unless there is something faster than gravity or something able to affect the past. I can think of one non-physical thing faster than gravity---my imagination! And to me, my imagination does exist, so my imagination is part of THE universe, if not part of the physical universe.
I can imagine an intelligent being, A, near the edge of my PhilJ sphere; I imagine that A is imagining me at the edge of its PhilJ sphere and, at the same time, A is imagining an intelligent being B at the opposite edge of A's PhilJ sphere. There is no gravity connection between me and B. Unless there is something faster than gravity, B does not exist to me, except in my imagination. If A exists in our physical universe, and B exists in A's physical universe, does B then exist in our physical universe?
If our physical universe is infinite, then we certainly can never know that it is finite; nor can we ever know that it is infinite. If we knew that the universe is a closed system, then we would know that it is finite. The question of whether an infinite universe is a closed system is indeterminate.
<hr noshade size="1">Changing the subject: Stoat (30 Nov 2006 : 04:53:11) commented that the half-live of the electron is infinite. On 29 Dec 2007, he opined that it is "billions and billions of years". I can verify those comments. According to the
Particle Data Group
, the mean life of an electron is 4.6 x 10^26 years, which is about 10^15 times the supposed age of the universe.
Fractal Foam Model of Universes: Creator
