Why was it, that upon the realization that it would be impossible to calculate the immensity of the universe, mathematicians concluded that it must be infinity large?I know, I know, there are many scientific and logically deductive reasons for coming to this conclusion other than what I will soon say, such as the theory of an expanding universe, and black holes; but for the sake of argument, let's look past these for the moment and assume that the infinite universe is an idea that was concluded without much factual evidence.
If we have no knowledge of when, why, if something ends, or what is beyond it, do we have to view it as infinite? Because we have no reason to think otherwise, and no evidence, we have to tell ourselves it is unmeasurable, and consistently the same of what we know already, but forever. We do this to cope with not knowing what is beyond.
Everything in our literal understanding has an end. An individual life, food, a ruler, a song. Why is the universe, a literal thing (or rather, a literal everything), clumped into the same category as ideas and ideologies such as God, numbers, and love, which usually have no end, and are therefore called infinite in many circumstances.
The universe may end! It is said that it is hard to grasp the thought of infinity. But really, I think it is the opposite. Infinity is hard to explain rationally and prove, but the thought is simple: never ending. The idea of ending has to be explained, and is not able to be accepted if it cannot be explained. We feel that we must know everything to have peace with ourselves. As a result, if we think that the universe goes on infinitely the same way that we see now, then we are theoretically not missing out on knowing how it ends, or anything within it, that is not in our sight.
We just don't know what the truth of the question is. We don't know how far it goes, if it ever does end, or what might be differing from what we assume is within it.
This being said, is it better for one to have peace with a likely false idea, or for one to spend the time to accept what they can not know?
1 comment:
As far as anyone can tell, the universe is not infinite, just really big and getting bigger.
The known universe is 13 billion light years in any direction, and presumably this radius has been increasing at around the speed of light since the big bang. It seems odd that we would happen to be in the center, so this leads to the theory that any spot will seem like the center. But how can that be?
This is hard to visualize, so reduce it from 3 dimensions to 2. So you have some dots on a flat sheet. To dots on the edge aren't in the center, so wrap the sheet around a ball. Now if you stood at any spot and looked around, you could see the same maximum distance in any direction without hitting any edge or barrier. But to do this, you had to add an invisible 3rd dimension to the 2-D world. Similarly, you can hypothesize a 4th dimension that curves space in such a way that there is no edge.
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