QQC: The Solar System & The Reverend Evan's Universe

Quote: See Left, Again.

Question: (Last time, I guess I did a QCQ, so this time it's a bona-fide QQC!) What is the purpose of figuring out how many advanced civilizations there are in the universe, if we will never be able to contact them, and theoretically they will never be able to contact us? and...

Since our solar system only occupies a minuscule amount of the actual space of the solar system, is dark matter detectable in the small mass of the solar system, or is it only detectable in the extremely (unimaginably) large masses of galaxies and galaxy clusters? Simply, is dark matter detectable close to home?

Comment: So, last time I set forth a few incongruities in the big bang theory. I also spent a long time to spell out what I was thinking, so that's probably why Dave didn't comment on my Blog. SO, aside from this lengthy and unnecessarily wordy and very unbecoming introductory clause, I shall try to be as concise as possible, and not talk your ear off about things that were probably not very well explained by my rantings, OK? Good; let's proceed.

I think that it is amazing to think about the size of the universe and the solar system. I hadn't realized how much of space is actually that, nor had I thought about the amount of time it would take for interstellar travel. It's incredible to think that it would take 25,000 years just to reach Proxima Centauri, which, incidentally, in nearby Alpha Centauri (really a binary system), but, again, the other two stars are so far away that Proxima Centauri orbits them about every million years, give or take half a million. So, even within a single star system the distances between relatively close stars is very far. I read that the Pleiades star cluster had a number of stars that were only a few light-weeks apart, very close for not being a traditional binary or triple or any sort of star system (besides a cluster). Then I thought, well how far is a few light-weeks? It turns out that 3 light-weeks (3 being a few) is 337.99 billion miles, or about 110 times the distance to Pluto. It takes 6 to 10 years to get to Pluto, so on average, a short (I'd say most of these stars are not just 3 light-weeks away) journey between really really really really close stars would take, oh, say about 700 years as a conservative measure (it's more like 1100 years if you do the math @ 35 000 mph). I'd say that space is probably the most accurate term that astronomers have yet come up with to describe our universe. But boy, what a big space we have (of course, we could cynically note that that's all we have, but, oh well...).

QQC on Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything Intro

Quote: See Left

Comment: I thought this reading, though well written and certainly very entertaining to read, was nonetheless absurd. I disagree entirely with the author's description of the creation of the universe, for personal and other reasons. I find, however, that indeed the preceding passage, which describes the incredibly small size of a proton, very valuable to understanding part of the reason why the Big Bang, as Bryson describes it here is not really possible. Because the Big Bang describes the creation of the laws of physics, it also puts forth the possibility of changing the very laws we have come to know as constant and immovable. Changing the laws of physics would pose an incredibly large problem to physicists and researchers. In fact, the idea that the Big Bang, within 1 minute, expanded the universe to perhaps a space larger than 4085 light-years across (which is incredibly large compared to us, but incredibly small compared to even our own Milky Way Galaxy, which has satellite galaxies that are bigger) certainly provides evidence for dark energy, the universal "repelling" force. But there is only one problem with the presence of dark energy. At the time the universe was "created" according to the big bang, there was absolutely nothing. No quarks, no leptons (like the familiar electron), no exotic particles, no atoms, no helium or hydrogen, in fact, there was nothing. So dark energy is not responsible for this initial expansion of the universe, because it did not exist for at least the entire first second, when an incredible amount of creation was occurring. Indeed, the nuclei of hydrogen and helium and lithium did not appear until three minutes (which, by the way, was after the anti-matter particles were destroyed in a gigantic destruction phase that extended for perhaps a minute). So what caused the universe to expand for even the first minute, let alone the first three minutes (which cosmologists say are the most crucial parts of the big bang)? Even in the first 380,000 years (far longer than man has been a Homo sapiens) whole atoms were just a dream, and the atomic nuclei (i.e. Proton and Neutron masses) floated around without electrons to emit radiation in a controlled fashion. This brief discussion then brings me to my next assignment part:

Question: Why is something that is so unprovable (don't even think about trying to prove it--they can't and that's their job. All that they're doing is compiling evidence) considered so fundamental to science and the world, especially when its concept is so incomprehensible? (For incomprehensible, can you imagine a singularity that exists not in nothing, but rather, is the existence? I mean, even my description of what it really is is confusing enough.)