On Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 3:06 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> >> If you're assuming that Real Numbers exist and that even a 1 cm >> universe would need a infinite number of labels > > > * > But not an infinite range of labels.* > OK now it's official, I have no idea what you're talking about. >> I ask my question again: >> *What is the difference between a "finite" universe that is expanding and >> accelerating and an infinite universe that is expanding and accelerating?* > > > * > Imagine the Earth is expanding like a balloon and at an accelerating > pace. * > A balloon is a terrible analogy for the Earth and a inflating balloon is an even worse analogy for a universe that will expand and accelerate forever. With the balloon you're standing outside of it watching the balloon expand into something that's already there, but you can't stand outside of the universe and the universe is not expanding into anything that's already there. > *> You can't go fast enough to circumnavigate it because there's a speed > limit. * > And to call that speed limit the speed of light would be true but tends to trivialize it, really it's something far more fundamental and profound, it's the very speed of causality. > *> In your imagination is it finite or infinite? Are there locations on it > which are finite distances apart? Is there a set of such locations > connecting any two points? Is the sum of the distances between locations > of such a set finite?* > I would say a infinite amount of information would be needed to adequately describe the evolution of the phase space (all possible values of the position and momentum of the particles in the universe) of such a expanding accelerating universe. It's infinite because no amount of approximation would be good enough for prediction, due to the accelerated creation of new space there will always be more values of position and momentum that particles can be in tomorrow than they can be in today. By the way, all this talk about the distance between particles in a expanding accelerating universe is rather ambiguous if you don't specify when, and "now" has no meaning everybody agrees with. And I've heard a bunch of bad analogies but I still haven't heard a direct answer to my question: What is the difference between a "finite" universe that is expanding and accelerating forever and an infinite universe that is expanding and accelerating forever? John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv28VWSwcimZqwLvHfJkkUruOSi4%3DZKn8QtvYF4Un4t6og%40mail.gmail.com.
