Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to I have heard....

Playing Powers of Ten...
Adam — (archived)

What always helped me grasp the Universe immensity was the old logarithmic expansion of scale - start with quarks and expand the field by 10 each time. At 15 steps you're at the human scale. Another 15 and we're at the Oort Cloud... only 11 more to the edge of the Hubble Horizon. So a mere 41 logarithmic steps to the far, far reaches.

What's truly mind-numbing is the 20 steps below the quark scale to the quantum gravity level... a long, long way to fall. Yet gravitational collapse is an express ticket all the way.

Alternatively there's Max Tegmark's recent discussion on physical duplicates in an infinite Universe. You, me and everything around us is duplicated every 10^10^26 metres away. Logarithmically that's still 10^26 steps. The whole Hubble volume is duplicated every 10^10^93 metres. Yet that duplication happens an INFINITE number of times in all directions. Every possible you, me and everything is actualised somewhere... if the Universe is infinite.

And in the May-Worlds quantum theory every quantum possibility exists side-by-side in alternative quantum Universes. Infinity squared!

...and then there's the Zaphod Beeblebrox approach. Sentenced to death in the Infinite Perspective Vortex he survived. How? The Vortex kills by showing a sentient the Whole Deal - shrinking their egos to oblivion. Except Beeblebrox's response was to go "f*** yeah it's all there for me..."

Some people just can't be helped.

Adam

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