Universe Is Lonelier Than Imagined, New Estimate Suggests

nerbot .... you beat me to it. I once some many summers ago became board of my surroundings, and having a jewlers loupe, went out and laid on the grass next to the base of one of my many Myrtle trees and face nearly in the dirt, observed a whole new world of life. Busy with the days tasks, tiny, tiny insects dashing about. I must have looked like another planet to all that might have looked up at this huge thing blocking their Sun.

a reply to: Gothmog

I believe you have an outdated view of universes. Per current popular models, we exist in one universe in the multiverse.

According to some current models, but by no means all.

No doubt you're familiar with Occcam's Razor: entities shall not be unnecessarily multiplied. It is far from proven that the multiplication of spatial dimensions that occurs in string theories is necessary to explain reality. As for the multiplication of theories themselves (on the order of 10^500 or so, apparently) that results, it is far from necessary to believe that actual universes exist in which they are true.

The idea of multiple universes is popular with the general public because everyone dreams of a world where things could be different. The popularity of string theories in the physics community is largely due to imaginative exhaustion. But let's not get one thing confused with another.

originally posted by: Aleister
a reply to: ngchunter

Not too many, according to the Wikipedia articles on the Deep Fields. If I ran the Hubble I'd devote an entire year to Deep Fields.

You can get the raw data. There are many, many images that show very distant galaxies clusters, whether they title it "deep field" is kind of pointless but that's all you'll find if your source is wikipedia rather than the actual raw data. That's why I referred you to my videos. I can find several such deep field images released each month. Here are just a few off hand that I have processed from the raw data:
h.dropcanvas.com...
h.dropcanvas.com...
h.dropcanvas.com...
h.dropcanvas.com...
h.dropcanvas.com...
You've probably never seen any of these before, but they are representative of the data released from Hubble each month.

We have to consider that this is about the OBSERVABLE universe.

There is a whole lot we cannot see because we don't have the instruments to detect it. And I'm not talking about quasi-esoteric things like dark matter and dark energy. I'm talking about actual stars and galaxies.

I think the universe is probably hundreds of millions of times larger than we can currently see.

a reply to: projectvxn

I think the universe is probably hundreds of millions of times larger than we can currently see.

Observation and theory agree with you. The metrical expansion of space (which means, roughly, the increase in magnitude of the 'constants' we use to measure it) causes the most remote galaxies to recede from us at superluminal velocities; the light from them never reaches us.

The diameter of the visible universe is about 92 billion light-years. The actual diameter is calculated to be about 14 trillion light-years -- a meaningless number. You're well within the ballpark.

a reply to: ngchunter

Are these public domain, or do they have copyright?

a reply to: swanne

Maybe we are looking at things the wrong way..........Maybe science is lacking because people tend to believe what they are told and do not question things enough.

well, so far as we know, there is only one universe, and as everyone knows....one is the loneliest number....

a reply to: SubTruth

Question things is good.

I like to make educated questions though.

Any 1000 mm telescope you can spare to observe deep space? Oh, and I'll also need a crew of several billions, by the looks of it - the universe is a large place to scan.

"Lonelier" is a dubious term when it comes to us and prospective intergalactic space exploration. If we could travel to other galaxies (irrespective of distance), we'd be absolutely spoilt for choice.

a reply to: wildespace

"Lonelier" is a dubious term

Not to mention a meaningless one.

One cannot be more or less lonely. One either is, or one isn't.

a reply to: swanne

They're public domain data. Technically they're derivative works since I did my own processing of the raw high bit data, but as far as I'm concerned they're public domain.