Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z On the Box What universe are we in ?

You have the cart before the horse Granny. It is only 'perfection' to us because we have evolved to fit what we've got.

Had the earth, for instance, been 100% covered in oceans we would all be aquatic. Had it been colder, we would all be covered in fur and so on. We don't even know if life has emerged on planets like Mars or even the gas giants like Saturn or Jupiter.

A number of stars have now been discovered to have planets, some of them of a size and distance from the star to suggest they might have liquid water and be like earth. It is even possible that with more sensitive instruments that the composition of their atmosphere can be detected.

It is almost certain that life will have emerged on some of these, and estimates made of how likely it is to do so. The result of this 'guesstimate' is, from memory, tens of thousands for our galaxy. The famous 'Fermi question' - "Well, where are they?" - is probably best answered by the enormous distances involves and the universal speed limit of 'c', the speed of light.

It is ludicrously arrogant to suppose we are the only lifeform to exit anywhere.

Ex "had the earth been covered in water we would be aquatic or if colder covered in fur"

Or possibly we wouldnt exist as the millions and millions of random evolutionary changes may not have occured

Evolutionary changes are far from 'random' they occur in response to changes in the environment. If the world got slowly cooler, for instance, the creatures in it would evolve ways of living with it, fur, thicker skin, more subcutaneous fat etc. Read your Darwin.

Its a mixture of randomness and evolvement eg if it gets colder something with hair will grow more hair but prior to that there had been random changes and some creatures evolved hair which kept them warm and survival of the fittest kept that strain going.

Well, the Moon was once a lot closer than it is now, and is moving away from us thanks to the effect of our tides on it. When it was nearer the tides would have been bigger than they are now and eclipses would have lasted a lot longer and there would have been more of them. In the future, it will appear too small to cover the sun's disc.

We could calculate day length whatever speed the planet is rotating, and do so for planets like Mercury (about 60 earth days I think) to the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter both of which have day lengths less than half of ours

You have missed the point about 'perfection' too and placed the cart firmly in front of the horse. We have adapted to the conditions on the earth, so of course they suit us to perfection. Were the earth to have been all water, and a bit further away so the surface was always frozen, we might have evolved as water breathing sea bottom creatures very different from ourselves. Perhaps something resembling a slug with intelligence. That too might be claiming it was inconceivable that such perfection could exist anywhere else in the universe!

That it exist at all is awesome, if indeed it does. We may well be living in a simulation. One could not tell. There is an excellent paper by Nick Bostrom exploring this possibility in some detail and he draws some startling conclusions in it. Rather more startling than anything that you'll see in 'The Matrix'. If you're interested you'll find it via google easily enough.

If you are interested in the nature of reality, Immanuel Kant's "Critique of pure reason" is the place to go. It's fascinating stuff but be warned it's hard going! His 'Noumenon' - the 'real' reality that exists, is bizarre beyond belief, being devoid of things like time and causality for instance.

While the moons orbit is being accelerated by tidal friction, transferring the earths rotational momentum to the moon, the moon's is also being decelerated by the solar wind/energy. I would find it hard to believe that as the moon travels away from earth that there is not a chance it will end up in a equilibrium between the two forces, obviously there will be quite a bit of overshoot and oscillation at first.

The equilibrium will not be fully stable because of the sun's variable activity and continual decay so the moon will have lost earth orbit before the sun dies.

The good news is that as time progresses the earth's rotational decay won't be accelerated by the moon as it is now although the sun will continue to slow us down, the solar effects on earth may be less than that on the moon because we have an atmosphere.

I think the moon is a long way from equilibrium. It is still moving away from the Earth and has a long way to go. It will probably end up as another planet around the sun. I wonder what a tideless earth will be like? Let us hope that its orbit, when it leaves the earth, will not intersect the Earths.

Now that would REALLY depress house prices.

My tide tables have been showing the tides increasing every year..thats why they built the Thames Barrage

I just watched Which Universe Are We In? on catch-up television. As usual, I’m fascinated by such programmes, but lose the plot when they try to explain complicated stuff. I was never very good at maths and apparently it’s ALL about maths.
Anyhow, what struck a chord was when the scientist at the end said how lucky we are as humans to have reached the stage where we can begin to understand and speculate on the nature of life, the universe and everything – even if there’s very little we can do to influence events.
He said we may be tiny specks in the universe (or multiverse, as the case may be), but in terms of what we have learned, we are giants. What an encouraging thought.

I doubt your tide tables show increasing tides. I doubt they show increasing sea level either, or sinking land, which are the reasons the Thames Barrage was built.

London has three reasons to worry. The South East is sinking as the North west rises - a response to the end of the ice age. Sea levels are rising due to global warming meaning the earth's ice is melting, and thirdly, global warming is likely to cause more frequent intense storms and there is the possibility of bigger storm surges.

Sea levels are rising by about 3mm a year. This corresponds to losing about 1,500 cubic kilometres of ice per year. Far to small to show up in tide tables which in any case are referred to mean sea level, not any absolute sea level.

One interesting point is the Greenland ice sheet. This enormous mass of ice has a large gravitational effect on the surrounding water pulling it into a 'heap' around Greenland. When it melts, although sea level will rise globally, the sea level as far away as the UK will fall slightly. Mind you, London and Liverpool and the Wirral will be well under water by then thanks to Antarctica melting. We will all be dead of old age by then, thank God.

You don't believe in God ! (with a capitol G) . Therefore no need to believe anything you say now.

What a wonderful piece of logical deduction, Granny!

I know what you mean though. I am equally suspicious of people who believe in an imaginary friend. One wonders what other nonsense they hold to be true.

Such a condescending waffling ---- Ex!!

God=universe
universe=God

Worshipping it won't make any difference to anything apart from relieving the guilt of sinners.

Imaginary friend ? That just shows how your concept is completely wrong , uneducated and ignorant. Another reason to diss your forced opinions on anything.