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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Dec 17, 2011 - 04:53pm PT
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So, bluering, you are saying that time did not exist until modern man constructed it?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Dec 17, 2011 - 05:02pm PT
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So, bluering, you are saying that time did not exist until modern man constructed it?
You'd first have to define time, right? As most people perceive time, it is a construct of modern time-keeping pieces and historical notes from 'our time', being the last 5,000 years or so.
Difficult question.
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Social climber
Retired to Appalachia
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Dec 17, 2011 - 05:30pm PT
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Donini, I think that the asnwer to question is beyond the capabilities of our brain to understand.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Dec 17, 2011 - 06:00pm PT
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It won't matter much either way…. Finite… Infinite…..
still stuck on earth…. with plenty of republicons….
in and of itself it looks pretty bleak for the human race
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Thomas
Trad climber
The Tilted World
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Dec 17, 2011 - 07:21pm PT
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Hey Jim and the rest of you, a great discussion of this very question is offered in Janna Levin's book How Did the Universe Get its Spots? The namesake chapter is absolutely remarkable and, naturally, brings in the CMB and resonance.
It is an outstanding read, and she's kind of cute too. Be sure to add it to your Christmas list.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Dec 21, 2011 - 05:54pm PT
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duh
nothing is finite!
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dr. juicer kaniglio
Trad climber
san diego, ca
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Dec 23, 2011 - 01:18am PT
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According to Eastern yoga philosophy there is only one universe and it is infinite. The human mind (which is finite, as opposed to the soul which is infinite) can only perceive such transcendental matters through intensive purification, devout yoga practice and meditation. Ignorance which is synonymous with anger, hatred, jealousy (peoples lower instinctual qualities) is said to be the veil that blinds the individual from the truth. The truth of course being God (aka cosmic consciousness or the creator etc.) which is the observer inside of everyone that even observes the mind, and gives you a mental kick in the ass when you break the rules, is easily recognizable. Once you've accepted this to be true as I have, you can begin to remove the veil of ignorance and begin to understand that this world is Maya (illusory and unreal) and that the only thing that is eternal and real is therefore the soul. This combined with the laws of karma and reincarnation make up the basis of what's really going on out there. One could waste ten thousand lifetimes blundering around and taking drugs and pondering questions that can never be answered. And that seems like exactly what most Americans want, please your senses,'develop more greed, etc. Keep shopping, keep ignoring the truth. Waste another lifetime searching and not finding any validity in the human experience... The truth is closer at hand than your own vision. Stop pondering. Sit silent in meditation. Stop thinking, and the answers to questions like this and all others will come automatically:)
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Dec 23, 2011 - 02:26am PT
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^^^^
Would you recommend mental speculations, too?
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dr. juicer kaniglio
Trad climber
san diego, ca
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Dec 23, 2011 - 05:14am PT
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Mighty Hiker I am not sure exactly what you mean by mental speculations. If you mean observation of the mind and it's outward seeking tendencies, games and speculations then yes. Self enquiry is a major part of this path too. Who am I? And worse, what are my character faults? Am I patient and caring or am I an as#@&%e? Sh#t I am a total as#@&%e and im greedy often times too. Top it off with my giant ego and taste the reality that any shitty situation Ive ever been involved in was my own fault. The effect of a definite cause. Nothing is random. People are not just bags of chemicals... Yee-haw:)
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Dec 23, 2011 - 08:04am PT
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"In every Now Being starts
Around every Here the globe of There is rolling
The Middle is everywhere
Bowed is the path of eternity"
Poetically spoken
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Laramie
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Dec 23, 2011 - 08:10am PT
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Jaybro,
aren't the contents of your wallet finite?
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Laramie
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Dec 23, 2011 - 08:12am PT
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Mighty Hiker,
aren't both philosophy and religion just mental speculations of cults and cult leaders?
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Thomas
Trad climber
The Tilted World
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Thanks for the link Cliffhanger. That was rad. I'm totally using that in my astronomy class.
Cheers!
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Jim-
This has fascinated me since I was a kid. Where does space end, where does it begin. The same goes for time. They go on forever at either end.
How could time or space be finite? If they are finite, what is the limiting factor? And what force defines what is finite.
This is really a fascinating thread I have tought about since my first camping trip staring up at the milky way.
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Ed-
Explain it to us morons.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Yeah Ed, splain it to us.
And while you are at it, if the universe were finite, but expanding at the speed of light, would it seem infinite from a fixed point in space? And is there such thing as a fixed point in space, or is everything always moving in relation to everything else?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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explain the map above?
what?
you don't have to explain maps, it's part of the way you thing!
The bottom of the map is the center of the Earth, and as you go up the map you move away from the center of the Earth...
moving left-to-right on the map spins you around in a circle, but instead of using degrees there are "hours" 15º wide...
the distance scale is logarithmic, going in powers of 10, but note that the units of distance also change...
from our cosmology discussion things don't get interesting until the top of the plot...
the "SDSS galaxies" refer to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which along with other surveys found the filamentation of the universe, due to the distribution of Dark Matter, around which the luminous matter is thought to have been attracted and condensed into stars... this is around a z=0.01 to 0.5
at z=0.78 or so, the universe is seen to be decelerating, that is, looking back in time the expansion was slowing down, but at that time (z=0.78) something causes the expansion to accelerator, that something is the Dark Energy which is pushing everything apart....
the first stars appear around z=20, the cosmic microwave background, the flash of light from the combination of electrons and protons to make hydrogen and the exit from the "plasma universe" occurs "shortly" after the big bang, the starting time for this particular universe...
the map is a way of organizing our observations back in time... the James Webb Space Telescope, if Congress funds it, will look back to z=20 and extend the blue stuff in the map a tiny bit higher to the dotted line that says "First stars"
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Laramie
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Ed and others about infinite space,
It seems that I read some theoreticians thoughts that space is not just out there to be filled. Space needs to be built/formed with energy. We put our Cartesian and Ricci tensor models in this space/time. Infinite space would need infinite energy.
I think this was the quantum theory of David Bohm--A Many Worlds View
What is the current thought on the creation of space?
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