Age of universe at 26.7B years, nearly twice as old as previously believed

Re:Age of universe at 26.7B years, nearly twice as old as pr... by WallyFunk on Thursday July 13, 2023 @04:56PM (#36715861)

> wouldn't it make more sense that time actually stretches infinitely the further back we go, thus nullifying the concept of a beginning?

I believe it could be 'turtles all the way down' as the phrase goes. Maybe our Universe started by a collision of two or more other Universes and we got this mess called the Big Bang. This doesn't explain how those other Universes started though.

But then as mere humans, we can't conceptually grasp Infinity itself. This is not some failing of ours, it's actually convenient to not imagine infinity, as it would drive us mad. The minute you include the Infinity Symbol (∞) in a math equation, all logic starts to cease and get very wobbly.

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Re:Age of universe at 26.7B years, nearly twice as old as pr... by belfalas on Thursday July 13, 2023 @06:15PM (#36716876)

> Maybe our Universe started by a collision of two or more other Universes and we got this mess called the Big Bang.

Once upon a time I watched PBS Nova program about string theory. I remember they talked about something along these lines. It's been almost two decades since I saw it so memory is rusty. But it was something along the lines of universes existing in these big "planes" (they visualized them like these big floating membranes) that would vibrate and occasionally smack into each other. When one of these collisions would occur, there was the potential for a new plane to be formed from that collision.

Like you said, that could potentially explain where new universes come from, but not how the other "turtles" got there in the first place.

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Re:Age of universe at 26.7B years, nearly twice as old as pr... by award_ on Thursday July 13, 2023 @06:40PM (#36717107)

That's brane or membrane theory. I think Ed Witten was a big proponent of it? I saw the same documentary btw ;-)

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Re:Age of universe at 26.7B years, nearly twice as old as pr... by montjoy on Friday July 14, 2023 @03:14AM (#36720480)

There’s a theory that the birth of our universe looks eerily similar to what might happen inside a black hole when it’s first formed. Fun to think about.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_cosmology

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Re:Age of universe at 26.7B years, nearly twice as old as pr... by mensetmanusman on Thursday July 13, 2023 @10:08PM (#36718608)

There is a simple proof that it can't be 'turtles all the way down' for infinity, or else the current moment couldn't exist yet (for infinity).

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