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94% of the universe’s galaxies are permanently beyond our reach

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61–70 of 101 posts

Re: 94% of the universe’s galaxies are permanently beyond our reach

#61
post #18

It's mind blowing to imagine that the observable universe is bigger than 90 billion light years, space-time expanding at multiple times the speed of light. If expansion keeps accelerating, then at some point gravity won't be able to keep the local cluster together and even those galaxies will drift away, then star systems, then planets, then matter itself will be torn apart until atoms and particles and quarks are de…

I saw a video proposing that it might be possible that the universe collapses on itself again and everything is reset.

But there are more non reversible things going on than just expansion. I only just found out that all elements radioactively decay and will eventually be gone.

Re: 94% of the universe’s galaxies are permanently beyond our reach

#62

Is there a galaxy on the boundary that is half disappeared (to us) and half visible?

This is a really great question that embodies the hacker spirit of trying to find loopholes and edge cases. I'm not an expert, but I think the answer is that there are no half-reachable galaxies. If there is a galaxy that is only partially reachable, then it must eventually be torn apart by the expansion of the universe. We could theoretically send a ship to the reachable half, and if the galaxy was still in one piece, we could then take a quick jaunt from the reachable half to the unreachable half. So for the unreachable half to be actually unreachable, it would have to be far away from the reachable half. I'm guessing that all galaxies have strong enough gravity that they won't be torn apart by the expansion of the universe.

Reachable and visible are different things. There are plenty of galaxies that are visible, but not reachable. But I think a similar argument would apply to show that there are no half-visible galaxies. Light can certainly make it from one side of a galaxy to the other. If we can see the light emitted by the near side of the galaxy, then we can see light that originated on the far side of the galaxy and passed through the near side on its way to us. Both sets of photons will reach us, and both will have about the same redshift. The only difference will be that the the photons from the far side of the galaxy will be a few thousand years older than the near ones. (This is all ignoring the fact that we can see all the way back to the cosmic microwave background, which comes from a time in the universe's history when there were no galaxies at all. Anything we can see that looks like a galaxy isn't even on the visible/not-visible boundary!)

Re: 94% of the universe’s galaxies are permanently beyond our reach

#64

"most of the universe's galaxies are already receding faster than the speed of light" Relativity theory: "It's impossible to go faster than the speed of light" WTF?

The expansion of space doesn’t fall under that limitation. Spacetime isn’t a particle or collection of particles. It’s the gravitational field.

Space-time isn't a gravitational field. Gravitational fields curve space-time.

Re: 94% of the universe’s galaxies are permanently beyond our reach

#66

If this fact makes you uneasy just know that 100% of the universe's galaxies, except the one we are currently in, are already unreachable within your lifetime.

If this fact makes you uneasy just know that (nearly) 100% of the galaxy's solar systems except the one we're currently in are (likely) unreachable within your lifetime. Though to be fair, I think the original title can't possibly know this, for instance if we live in a simulation, what's to say that some sort of algorithm (assuming we learn to meta-code our own existence) could put us in any galaxy we choose... Or w…

If we're in a simulation then there aren't any alien civilizations. No sense wasting computational resources on them.

P.S. As far as I know, computational complexity is the only physical quantity that doesn't obey conservation laws. So we're probably not in a simulation. If we were, it would probably be the other way around.

Re: 94% of the universe’s galaxies are permanently beyond our reach

#67
post #54
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* or time travel / manipulate space-time

* or physics isn't finished yet and methods exist outside these paradigms.

At this point you're basically hoping for literal magic.

It's nice to dream, but, well...

Re: 94% of the universe’s galaxies are permanently beyond our reach

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this fact makes you uneasy just know that (nearly) 100% of the galaxy's solar systems except the one we're currently in are (likely) unreachable within your lifetime. Though to be fair, I think the original title can't possibly know this, for instance if we live in a simulation, what's to say that some sort of algorithm (assuming we learn to meta-code our own existence) could put us in any galaxy we choose... Or w…

If we're in a simulation then there aren't any alien civilizations. No sense wasting computational resources on them. P.S. As far as I know, computational complexity is the only physical quantity that doesn't obey conservation laws. So we're probably not in a simulation. If we were, it would probably be the other way around.

Why wouldn’t aliens work in a simulation model? The universe could be a shared sandbox to cross pollinate models or expose them to similar realities. Hah.

Re: 94% of the universe’s galaxies are permanently beyond our reach

#69
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* or physics isn't finished yet and methods exist outside these paradigms.

At this point you're basically hoping for literal magic. It's nice to dream, but, well...

Lasers are magic for pre-Maxwell physicists

Re: 94% of the universe’s galaxies are permanently beyond our reach

#70
post #40
post #18

It's mind blowing to imagine that the observable universe is bigger than 90 billion light years, space-time expanding at multiple times the speed of light. If expansion keeps accelerating, then at some point gravity won't be able to keep the local cluster together and even those galaxies will drift away, then star systems, then planets, then matter itself will be torn apart until atoms and particles and quarks are de…

> Something in my mind tells me that there must be more to it, the careful balance of universal constants that allow for matter and stars and life to exist surely would not allow it all to be destroyed forever in the end... Keep in mind that we don't really understand this stuff. "Dark matter" isn't a weird phase of matter, it's the name of the Keleven inserted because our observations of the universe don't match up…

>Keleven

A wonderful use of the word.

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