Friday, October 29, 2010

QQC2

Quote: Now the first thing you will likely realize is that space is extremely well named and rather dismayingly uneventful. Our solar system may be the liveliest thing for trillions of miles, but all the visable stuff in it-- the sun, the planets and their moons...--fills less than a trillionth of the available space.

Question: How many stars would we see?

Comment: I'm aware that our solar system doesn't take up much space at all, but when they call space uneventful, I wonder what you would see, if not the constant asteroids. Wouldn't there still be the gorgeous stars all around of various colors? Although, I guess that could get boring pretty quickly. It seems like a long journey like that is impossible, unless we can make our rocket ships somehow go a billion times faster.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

QQC 1

Quote: "When the universe begins to expand, it won't be spreading out to fill a larger emptiness. The only space that exists is the space it creates as it grows."

Questions: How could that be possible? How do we even know this? Where did this idea come from? How can something possibly grow further, when there's nothing to grow in, on, or around? How could there not be any extra space that allows the universe to grow? How quickly does the universe grow, and how often? What is outside of existence? If something is outside of existence, then how could it come to exist? Whatever happened to 'matter cannot be created or destroyed?'

Comment: So, whatever happened to that rule that I've always learned in just about every science class I've ever been in? "Matter cannot be created or destroyed." That doesn't seem to fit that rule. Or does that rule only apply to what already exists? That doesn't really make sense either, because that would mean that nothing more could be created, including the universe.
Whenever I pictured the universe growing, I pictured the black spot filled with stars expanding in empty white space. I'm not sure why. Nothingness just seems to be represented by blank white. However, I would see how that would make sense, since if there was nothing, then there would be no color, no place for the spot to be, or anything. All in all this whole statement has got me wondering just how these scientists got this idea that the universe just keeps on growing. Did they just pull it out of their ears, or what? Or is there some way that they can prove this theory to even be possible? How do we know that the universe is 'infinite'? How do we know it's not just too big to explore? Well, the more I think about it, the more questions I have, even though I'm pretty sure they're impossible to answer.