Let's make an interesting thread. For those who study or at least try to learn about astronomy/the universe (I'm not talking philosophical or religious), purely the science behind the universe, what are the most interesting unsolved or mysterious parts of our physical universe?


Here would be my answers (and questions):

1. The big-bang itself - from what I've read, before the big bang there was "nothing", not even time, which I can't wrap my head around. Supposedly particles pop in and out of existence, and somehow these particles... collided and triggered the big bang? I don't think I remember it right. How exactly did something come from "nothing"?


2. How is there no center of the universe? If you imagine it like an area, there will technically be an area that is more "center" than anywhere else. Some people said to imagine it like a balloon or a bubble, and the surface is expanding. Ok... but I can still pinpoint the "center" of a bubble, it's inside the bubble. I don't understand this and would love help understanding it.


3. Is the universe infinite or does it loop back into itself? It doesn't seem like there's a current consensus. Is there? Also, if the universe is "infinite" does that mean galaxies/stars/planets go on forever, or just that the "empty space" goes on forever? Leads me to question 4.


4. Stars/galaxies - because the universe is around 13-14 billion years, and there was a great expansion, does that mean there's some area in space where stars and galaxies haven't formed yet, and it's just empty? Or, is the leading hypothesis that stars and galaxies actuallygo on forever?


5. With a black hole, how is it possible that so much matter is crammed into such a small space? There are "things" smaller than an atom, correct? Is all the matter just packed down into atom sized things? Then, is there a maximum amount of matter that can fit into say.. a 10x10 atom area? Or, can things get infinitely small?


6. How scientifically accepted is string theory and can you try to explain it more?

Dark matter/Dark energy.

Not really the universe I suppose, but I think consciousness is the biggest mystery. So even with the universe being formed, how are we conscience of anything?

Biggest mystery is how you can fire people over a flu with a 99.02% survival rate

Your first question is what gives me nightmares


Although it's right there where metaphysical meets "science"


why is there SOMETHING rather than nothing? Given a dice roll of possible universes ones with nothing seem easier therefore more likely and common.

How many Earth's can fit inside Uranus?

Neither of which exist.

Fake narrative to get funding.

All we know is that we don't know.

whether corvid is real or not

Is the earth shaped like a bowl or a ball? Which one is more likely to contain water?

This topic is what always confuses me. What exactly causes consciousness? What makes me so conscious of my existence compared to a dog for example? People will say "well obviously it's the brain size". A bigger brain means it can handle more processes which leads to developing ideas that assist in our preservation. Okay that's fine but a computer has a much more powerful "brain" than us and can handle so much more processes. Why then do computers not see the world the way we do? Even if we program an AI to preserve itself or propagate and survive, would it then have a consciousness? Are the more powerful AI out there on the verge of a consciousness? Does one already possess it?

My whole ramble is basically being mindfukt @ what's the difference between our brain and computers which allows us to experience consciousness but not them.

1% autism bro. Not in the am bro.

wormholes-crazy that you could enter one and in theory (if you survived) will end up in another part of the galaxy and in a different time

Abiogenesis

1. What happened at the moment or before the big bang is only theorized right now. It is difficult to measure anything before the big bang since the universe no longer exists as it did at that moment. Every single particle in the universe was condensed into a very small point. That could have been the universe itself all in that point. It's not that there was nothing or that time or anything did not exist, it's that we can probably never know for sure because it is immeasurable.

2. I believe if there is, there would be no way for us to know where it is considering the universe is thought to be infinite. If it is finite, then it would have a center somewhere.

3. Only theories at this point. It may loop in on itself or it may just go on forever, no one can prove it right now.

4. Very well could be. Just like when you play pool and off the break there is some places on the table where there are no balls. Or when you drop food colouring into a glass of water and for a moment it is in only some areas then eventually evens out.

5. Black holes have huge gravity, but they aren't condensed to a point like at the beginning of the big bang - they are massive.

6. String theory is only a theory and so far as we know there is no way to prove it yet. It says that particles are made up of vibrating strings, but in order for it to work, there needs to exist 11 dimensions of space and 1 of time.


I'm interested in knowing why electrons act as a particle and as a wave, and why the wave function collapses when you try to measure an electron. Electrons can be in several places at once, act as a wave and a particle at the same time, or be spinning in both directions at once, but when you try to measure them, you only find them in one place, acting as either a wave or particle, and only spinning in one direction. It is believed when you measure them, another universe is created at that moment in which the answers you didn't get exist in the new universe - there is actually some evidence to support this (multiple worlds theory).

I'd also like to know more about time and how we only perceive it moving forward. It is believed to be because of entropy that we perceive things before and after (every particle in the universe is decaying or going to a point of a more randomness and once it does it is very unlikely or impossible for it to return to a point of being less random).

Oh, also gravity. We know that it warps space and time but no one knows how or why.

hands down its whats beyond the plank length

everything just appears out of that veil

Infinity is impossible to wrap your head around. Like for example even if there were100 trillion new stars being formed every second it would still be a calculable number. Is infinity even possible or is it just a mathematical concept?

Why do hot dogs come in packs of 10 and buns in packs of 8?

Whether or not Mike O Hearn is truly natural...

They don't want to see us winning.

Newsflash: its all BS

What makes this so mysterious? I can't remember. I know that dark matter was proposed, because without it, everything collapses into galaxies, like what is keeping things in place? There needed to be some form of mass that has gravity that is keeping things in place for any calculations to make sense. So, we hypothesized dark matter. Then.. I could be wrong but I think we actually measured it/like recorded it, I could be wrong on that. Is it so mysterious because there's something nothing there we can detect, it's just random gravity? Remind me.That could be a big one. Part of me wonders if it's just a biproduct of an advanced mind like the human mind. A big mystery to me is why minds like ours don't evolve more often, clearly it's an advantage, I mean look at how much humans dominate. Maybe it's just rate and you need opposable thumbs to even begin experimenting with things, and those experiments are what lead to an even more advanced mind. Maybe once you get to human level, 'consciousness' is just a result of being able to perceive, and remember so much information at once. I could totally be wrong and would love to hear more, tell me more.The real question, finallyDamn. I have a lot of thoughts on this that I don't feel like typing out haha. I have a whole theory here personally. So, computers are simply doing tasks we tell them to do. The reason the human brain is different is because of the underlying 'programs' that are built by evolution. If you know how evolution works, you know that basically the only beings/animals that survived happen to have these underlying.... principals, such as... survive, reproduce. All of the things that humans experience, including being social, making people laugh, feeling good from doing certain tasks, all those things, drives, emotions are all designed to help us have better odds at survival and reproduction.

So... without billions of years of live evolving these root programs, AI/computers have no way they'd act like us. Part of me wonders if you could have a super computer reproduce intelligence and consciousness.. but, what you'd have to do is simulate/emulate evolution.

Basically, I wonder... if you built a super computer program that has basic physics into this fake environment, and then "made" a couple reproducing cells/organisms, and wrote a code that basically says "use the surrounding environment to reproduce as successfully and often as you can" (simulating early evolution), and let it go. Then, because it's a super computer, you turn the speed up by 1,000,000x. I wonder, would the computer program soon start to resemble early life? Would it keep going, would physics change the environment leading to different species, and could you eventually catch a lucky species that became intelligent?

That's the only way I could think of to create a human-like AI system that is self aware and actually has any desire to do anything or care about anything. As it is, they have no reason to care or want anything, at all. "Wanting things" is a human/animal trait that comes from evolution.

Anyway, see my other post above about consciousness.I looked into wormholes once, my understanding is we're not even positive they exist, it's more of an equation that could or could not be reality, but if they do exist they're super small like not something you can even see. Who knows, we're brand new to realistic science as a species maybe we'll learn more in the future.This sounds like an interesting reply. What's a plank, tell me more? Is it some minimum/maximum unit of measurement? If so, that IS interesting, like how did that become a measurement?

What is this? Come on put some time into this reply lol let's have a legit good Misc thread here.

then how do you explain the expansion of the universe speeding up?

Another one for me is time. I have a hard time imagining that "time" doesn't exist, or at one point didn't exist.
What exactly do you think is BS? Explain. If you think this science we're talking about is BS, then what do you think the reality is?

Simulation stuff? Because that's a legitimately interesting topic and I'm not totally against it, I have a lot of reasons to think that may be a possibility.Interesting. Are you talking about my #4 question? Are you saying we don't know if galaxies/stars/planets just go on forever or if there's a random line where they just end and it's endless empty space after that? That's a big one I want to know more about.

As far as center, to me, everything that is physical/physically exists has a center to it. A piece of paper, a baseball, a car, a skyscraper, a pixel on a TV, etc. I just can't wrap my head around there not being a "center" to all this stuff, UNLESS the answer is that we think stars/galaxies just go on forever.

the scientific method is a tool and not the end all be all to explaining reality. people seem to think of scientists like modern wizards, alchemists that can find out the deepest secrets of the universe lol. were you around during the big bang? can you show me a photo? while you are at it please show me this magical sky "logic" under a microscope which you all seem to believe in :O

brb everything was created by god

A balloon is a phsyical thing. The center would be inside the balloon. Just like the center of a basketball. So, I'd say that the center would be the center of the balloon (even though it's just air).


For the universe to be like a balloon, I'd say the center was the middle of the outer area of galaxies. Unless, somebody is suggesting the universe is like a balloon, but there's no... nothing in the center? (where the air would be in a balloon). Is that person suggesting everything just stops once you go in that direction? Is there space/time there just no galaxies, or is that center area just.. nothingness, and there's not even empty space/time there?

That's the part that's confusing to me. If the universe is actually shaped like a balloon (with no nipple thingy) or a bubble, then there's a massive 3 dimensional space that is flat, and it circles something. If it goes in a circle like a balloon or bubble, the center is the middle.



Help me understand what I'm missing lol. Do you understand it?

Well, you're kind of saying you just don't understand (or believe) in scientific methods. I mean, we do have ways that make real sense that measure things, and figure out things. They seem difficult to us who aren't trained in XYZ field of science, but once you start looking into the methods, they make total sense and are provable and repeatable. That's how we know a lot of stuff about the universe.


However, there are tons of mysteries and if you're essentially saying God made it, that's not bad, I can't fault you for that. None of us understand this yet. However, I'd ask.. ok, what came before God? Who made God?


Anyway, I don't want this thread to get religious, but I wonder if "we" are god. What if advanced beings created infinite life where you could be happy 24/7, and we (living this life now) are in this life as an experience, because it's so real and authentic? I mean, it would make sense to go to our timeline. We're the most comfortable humans that have existed, yet, we're just before the dawn of AI and humans turning into computers/etc. We're in the last best age of authentic humans, so that's good evidence there. Maybe we die, wake up from our pod or whatever, with the people we care about around us saying "hey, you did it! Wasn't that great, sad, rough, exciting, unique, all that? Do you want to go in for another life? Let's do it" and you sit back down and hit play. It would make sense as a form of experience/entertainment, especially in a future where you never die and everything is easy. Hardship makes a story good. Maybe this is our experience and "god" and heaven with family surrounding you is just the current real universe?


Anyway, let's not get too religious lol.

Ghosts. Where do they come from? What do they want? How can they move on to rest in peace?

The most complex thing in the known universe is the human brain



It makes astrophysics look like a joke