The Measure of Us

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347

Close to midnight.

I'd put us under I, for inconsequential.

Exactly. We are nothing but a speck on the cog on the cog on the cog on the cog on the cog on the cog on the cog on the cog of the wheel.

The perception of reality, including the whole universe (either right or wrong) fit very comfortably within your brain.

Sorry, but I can't accept our inferiority until a more advanced creature comes and tell us we worth nothing (and he'd better use convincing arguments too).

Why, a blue whale barked at me "Back of the bus, Bubba!" just this morning. They're bigger, right? Bigger brains, too. We value big brains, yes?

There's your proof!

Ok, ok, but other than a blue whale, the wife or God ?.

My ex still confuses the two.

That is the one I like better, with the scroll wheel....

Very Very Cool

4.4e10 metres for the estimated size of the universe (at 'only' 13.5 billion light years, the part we can actually see is smaller) on the Big End, to the smallest unit of distance which has any physical meaning at all (in the QM sense), the Planck Length, at 1.6 × 10^-35 metres at the Small End. The exponents of these two extremes span around 45 powers of ten, with us at the 10e0 notch, and so, on a magnitude scale we're at the 3/4 mark more or less.

For us to be smack in the middle, we'd have to be about 10e12 smaller, that is, about the size of an atom.

So, we are actually gigantic creatures ! Cool ! I guess I won't be able to take that out of my head the during the next romantic intercourse !!

I take it you've never filled out a tax return?

Tax return !? Is that posible?, sorry, in my country that is an unknown concept.

Oh! You don't know what you're missing! In this country every April 15 we all engage in a scintilating form of national sex called 'Pay Your Taxes'. It's very straightforward: you grab a pen (blue or black ink only, please), a simple form called a '1040' and then bend over. Like a Menage a Trois, except that I don't know how to say '300 million' in French.

Ok, here is another question from my curiosity chest:

Theoretically, what would be the frequency of 1 plank length?

Would it be 3X10e43 hz? If so, could this be the "refresh rate of reality", or the granularity of space time on the quantum level?

Ha! Should I mark this Off-Topic?!

The reason I chose the Plank length is because it is the theoretical smallest length measurable 10 -35Meters.The maximum observable universe,according to Wikipedia is 880e+e24 meters.

So that would be a range of 10e59? With us at 10e0? Now I'm lost in exponents and engineering units, so where would we fit on this scale?

Remember, I am just putting my toe in the water with all this technical jargon,but I'll get there eventually,I hope. Puttin', a strain on this old gray matter.But to me, it looks like it is further "down" than it is "up" from where we are.About 2/3?

I think that if you don't drink, maybe you should take it up.

It might just bridle some of that insane lust for unfathamable information that you seem to have. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but some of us slower ones are having trouble keeping up.

I take it pot doesn't work for you?

It depends on the size of the pot and what is in it.

There's a lot more to the 'size of the (observable) Universe' than that Wiki quote would lead you believe.

Let's say a photon leaves a galaxy 13.1 billion years ago and finally ends up in one of our telescopes. Everybody knows that speed * time = distance, right, and so we dutifully multiply c (the speed of light) * 13.1 billion years and we get a distance of 13.1 billion light years to that galaxy. Piece of cake, right?

Wrong. More like 46 billion light years.

"How is that possible?!" you may ask, "Nothing can travel faster than light!" and you'd be right, except for one thing: the expansion of spacetime itself is under no such constraint. In the interval that photon was travelling, the entire Universe got a lot bigger. That galaxy is now 46 billion light years away, but its light is still only 13.1 billion years old. And it got here at the speed of light. How? By stretching. 'Redshift'. Cool, huh?

Very interesting answer, but that makes me wander about the endurance of a sub-atomic particle, like a photon, are they supposed to be aethernal? don't they decay and cease to exist? do they reach our telescopes no matter how far away they are from their origin ? are we sure the boundary of the observable universe is actually the boundary, or it keeps going on for ever and ever, but its light just doesn't make it here?.

More like 1.9e43 Hz, but sounds to me like you might inferring a whole bunch of other stuff from this. Ain't necessarily so.

What is the Planck Length, first of all? A better question might be, "Why a Planck Length at all?" Good question! The answer's pretty simple, actually: it is the shortest wavelength you can get (theoretically) before those quanta pack so much energy that they all spontaneously collapse into tiny black holes. Try to make the wavelength even shorter and all you'll get for your trouble will be more massive black holes. By the way, the Large Hadron Collider is so unimaginably far from being able to make black holes that the hole idea is patently ridiculous.

[Just for grins, calculate the de Broglie wavelength of say, the black hole parked at the center of giant elliptical galaxy M-87. That monster weighs in at something like two billion solar masses (all packed into a space much smaller than one Planck Length and whose event horizon is smaller than our own solar system). Imagine a single photon having that mass-energy? I can't, but there's nothing saying such things can't exist]

The Planck Length is just a limit below which the Universe is impossible to observe. It doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't anything smaller, but only that we'll never see it. A kind of Quantum Firewall behind which exists....who knows?

What'd I tell you about them negative waves, Moriarty?

You're always with them negative waves.

Why don't you ever come out with something righteous and beautiful?

_{(Kelly's Heros)}

I feel the same way about tax returns.

Rearrange just a few letters and it will make a black - or just hole otherwise.

Hadron..........Hardon........See we are now making holes.

it is all an Illusion!

A book wot explains the Last Frontiers of Physics? Holy cow! Where's my credit card?!

Man, Epke, if I were David Bohm, I would be sooooo face-palming right now..

Thanks, I needed this!

For me it is the "and the unsolved Riddles of Brain and Body".

So after reading - I will be able to understand my wife........Right?

Oh, where on earth is Jorrie when needed?

All really fun and great comments but lets face it,

Our Universe is just a spec of dust under Giants Finger nail...........

Lets just be happy that our Giant has bad Hygiene!

it's an abstract question that can't be answered, but we can manipulate some of it for better or worse. i quess that puts us somewhere below god, depending on your beliefs.

All this gives me a new respect for spider webs.

The magnitude of littleness is very impressive indeed.