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Could Our Entire Universe Be Just a Mote in Someone Else's?

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Could our entire physical universe, with all its stars and galaxies and nebulae, be just a speck of dust or a raindrop on a windowsill in another universe?
I used to have this friend who spoke about this. He used to say that we could be just "a crack in the pavement" in someone else's universe. I'm not saying I believe this myself, but the idea is tantalising, and sufficiently fortean to qualify for the board imho. I imagine it could be a fairly old or even ancient idea. Haven't seen it on the board before though.
I guess the extended version of this theory is that our universe is a raindrop on a windowsill in another universe, and that entire universe is the same in another universe, and so on ad infinitum.
Anyway, a few questions:

(i) What is the scientific word for this theory/notion?

(ii) Have there been any famous people who believed it, or something similar?

(iii) I guess it's the kind of thing which can never be proved or disproved, but is there any evidence which suggests it's not true?

(iv) Any other thoughts welcome.

Big Bill Robinson
 
Re: Could our entire universe be just a mote in someone else

Big Bill Robins said:
Could our entire physical universe, with all its stars and galaxies and nebulae, be just a speck of dust or a raindrop on a windowsill in another universe?
Click to expand...
Yes.

That's one that's often occurred to me too.
 
There is a similar theory put forward recently by a scientific paper that, statistically, the chances are that our universe is just an advanced simulation inside a computer in someone else's universe.

After all, there can only be one starting universe. This would also explain why we can't definitely answer questions about God, or what came before the universe - because there was nothing before. Perhaps the people in the 'first' universe actually know what happened before, since they would have more developed technology and brains than us by default.

Nothing to worry about though, as we will probably never know if this is the case, so you might as well carry on living :)
 
I used to contemplate this as a child. I didn't find the answer yet, but this does remind me of Dr. Suess's "Horton Hears a Who."

We should all be very careful when dusting, so as not to upset all the little universes. :p

Seriously though, I used to really think hard about it, and try to comprehend what could be on the "outside" of space, or if there is an outside, and what could be beyond that, etc. The concept of infinity can be a bit mind blowing for a pre-teen girl.
 
This is really related to the two great questions which I also thought of as a child


Infinity:
If the known universe has an end or is finite (and what is known is finite ) then what is beyond that and how can we include that in our conception of what exists.


Eternity.
Did the universe "begin" at some point and will it "end and what was before that beginning and what will be after that end ?


Non- theistic Buddhism would say , for example, that there are things that we simply cannot comprehend and I think those are two of them. We can't really comprehend something has has no beginning, end, or limit and has always existed and will always exist. Even nothingness is a kind of "something".
 
It's always a possibility - we may never have the technical know-how to detect such things, just as we don't currently have the actual means to prove superstrings theory ;) I kinda like the idea that all of what we 'know' (i.e. creation) is open-ended... :)
 
Originally posted by Rrose Selavy



Infinity:
If the known universe has an end or is finite (and what is known is finite ) then what is beyond that and how can we include that in our conception of what exists.
Click to expand...


When I was a kid, we had two wardrobes on either side of the main bedroom, both had full length mirrors and if I stood between them I used to think I was looking into infinity.
 
p.younger said:
When I was a kid, we had two wardrobes on either side of the main bedroom, both had full length mirrors and if I stood between them I used to think I was looking into infinity.
Click to expand...

Yes, we used to have two mirror doors on a wardrobe that we could open and face each other and stand between. What is interesting about that analogy is they we believe that it should be repeated forever but in practice, we can only see so far and a limited number of repeated images from our perspective.
 
To pull back to the topic, if our universe, or even individual galaxies, were the equivalent of sub-atomic particle in a larger universe, think of the relative time differential.

If you consider how swiftly event occur at the atomic and sub atomic levels level in our universe, to a larger creation the entire life-time of our universe might be measured in that universe's equivalent of femtoseconds, (1,000,000,000,000,000 of a second).
 
Timble said:
.. the entire life-time of our universe might be measured in that universe's equivalent of femtoseconds, (1,000,000,000,000,000 of a second).
Click to expand...
Yep, our Universe is frozen in the splittiest split second of some phenomenal explosion... the smoke and flame from a fire cracker going off in some God's backyard, thrown there by the neighbourhood devils.
 
It's a tantalising notion, chaps . . .

'Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.'

De Morgan: A Budget of Paradoxes,

Carole
 
I'm watching, 'Pleasantville' (1998).

It's about a couple of 1990's American teenagers sucked into the hermetically sealed Universe of a black and white, 1950's, American TV sitcom.

Their presence there baffles and then changes the locals.

It's the concept of a limited Universe being invaded and fundamentally changed by outsiders from a larger and more multi-dimensional Universe that's perhaps relevant here.
 
Ah, but it was named before these theories were, uh, theorised. Perhapswe ought to rename it?
 
I helped clear out my mate's garage this weekend.

At the back behind loads of boxes was an old nappy (diaper) bin from when their 5 year old used to wear them.

Unfortunatley, it was heavier than you would expect and it turned out that there were several aged nappies still left in it from around 3 years ago! :cross eye

He emptied the bin (don't go to any car boot sales in Torbay over the next few weeks) and I thought:

"Have we just wiped out an entire universe?"
Those microbes were probably perfectly happy in their self contained universe and then we come along as the Destroyers and POOF! that's their existence compromised.

Are we just so much poo on nappies?
 
This is something I used to contimplate all the time when I smoked illegal but not particularly harmfull substances.

I don't see why not to be honest but I can't realy see why it's inportent enough to think about. I just can't see what efect it would have...

and isn't it true (I'm sure I read it somewhere) that the universe is actualy finite but it expands at a rate so great that it is theoreticaly inposible to travel so fast and therefore we can never reach it's end and if this is true what exists beyond existance?
 
Anyone remember Clash of the Titans? The scene where people were made of clay, and the gods played with them in an arena, their lives an inevitability thrown to the whims of a god.

I often thought about that when I'd seen that film....are our lives at the amusement of others?
 
See also Billy Connoley's 'Chair Leg' theory (expounded in various Billy Connoley stand-up videos).
 
Inverurie Jones said:
Ah, but it was named before these theories were, uh, theorised. Perhapswe ought to rename it?
Click to expand...

Well, hmm maybe the multi-verse or the "Megaverse" which is what Sailor Moon and her crew work so hard to save. :D
 
Regarding Mirror to Mirror

Just a quick thought on the subject of looking at yourself between two mirrors.

I have been wondering what I would do if I performed this action, and, way in the distance and very small, one of the reflections was of somebody else.

By the way, I believe the mirror-to-mirror thing is called 'tunel infinity'.
 
Thank you everyone for your excellent replies. :)

Big Bill Robinson
 
Re: Regarding Mirror to Mirror

joester said:
Just a quick thought on the subject of looking at yourself between two mirrors.

I have been wondering what I would do if I performed this action, and, way in the distance and very small, one of the reflections was of somebody else.

By the way, I believe the mirror-to-mirror thing is called 'tunel infinity'.
Click to expand...

but why does it curve and appear to be tinged with green?
 
:) !pleh . esrevinu rorrim a ni deppart m'i won !reggub
 
taras said:
There is a similar theory put forward recently by a scientific paper that, statistically, the chances are that our universe is just an advanced simulation inside a computer in someone else's universe.

After all, there can only be one starting universe. This would also explain why we can't definitely answer questions about God, or what came before the universe - because there was nothing before. Perhaps the people in the 'first' universe actually know what happened before, since they would have more developed technology and brains than us by default.

Nothing to worry about though, as we will probably never know if this is the case, so you might as well carry on living :)
Click to expand...

Interestingly I got Iain M. Banks' "The Algebraist" (so far it seems like a return to form although its possible the end might let it down) which has a Galaxy-wide religion based on this kind of thinking.

The general assumption it is statistically likely that we are living in a simualtion but that even if it is so it makes no actual difference and you just "carry on living" ;)

However, this religion has developed beyond that and called itself the Truth which goes by the principle that if enough people believe that it is a simulation then the simulation can't continue and so it will end and they will receive the ultimate revelation - what it was all about. The problem is that you don't know where the tipping point is. It also leads to a few other things - if it is a simulation then you can do what you want but worse as well as evangelising if you were to actually kill off unbelievers it would bring this tipping point closer.

It does also imply that you can somehow infer the mind of the simulators (you could for example be just a construct in the simulation and not a real person immersed in it and so if they turn the simulation off you die).

I was also wondering if the Revelation happening in a simualtion within a simulation would cause that simualtion to break down in some kind of cascade effect leading to some ultimate Revelation but would that only affect the top most level of simulation?

Hmmmmm its late and I'm unsure if that even makes sense. It all gets a little convulted and a lot of that is just my musings ;)
 
In one of the volumes of the Lettres edifiantes et curieuses that appeared in Paris during the first half of the eighteenth century, Father Fontecchio of the Society of Jesus planned a study of the superstitions and misinformation of the common people of Canton; in the preliminary outline he noted that the Fish was a shifting and shining creature that nobody had ever caught but that many said they had glimpsed in the depths of mirrors. Father Fontecchio died in 1736, and the work begun by his pen remained unfinished; some 150 years later Herbert Allen Giles took up the interrupted task. According to Giles, belief in the Fish is part of a larger myth that goes back to the legendary times of the Yellow Emperor.

In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different, neither beings nor colours nor shapes were the same. Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors. One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but at the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere slavish reflections. Nonetheless, a day will come when the magic spell will be shaken off.

The first to awaken will be the Fish. Deep in the mirror we will perceive a very faint line and the colour of this line will be like no other colour. Later on, other shapes will begin to stir. Little by little they will differ from us; little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barrier of glass or metal and this time will not be defeated. Side by side with these mirror creatures, the creatures of water will join the battle.

In Yunnan they do not speak of the Fish but of the Tiger of the Mirror. Others believe that in advance of the invasion we will hear from the depths of mirrors the clatter of weapons.

(Jorge Luis Borges, 'The Fauna of Mirrors' from 'The Book of Imaginary Beings')
 
A couple of scattered thoughts. It occurred to me several years ago that if we could isolate the bare minimum of fundamental physical laws and particles, that they could then be easily programmed into a computer. Given sufficient computing resources, it would then make sense to simply populate the simulation with this information and adequate instances of 'particles' - then a complete universal simulation would naturally follow. No need to program more complex physical laws if they follow from more fundamental ones. Shortly after, they made that 13th Floor movie and I was convinced they stole my idea.

The other thing that troubles me is that the smaller and more fundamental we go in physical observations, the more things appear to behave digitally. For example, somehow scientists observed that subatomic particles seem to exist only in discreet locations/orientations.. and cannot be observed to move between these. Something to do with our observations, or are we slowly discovering that we exist in a digital universe?
 
Microscopic Worlds ...

I remember my mum reading a monthly magazine in the fifties, (a little like Fortean Tmes probably) called - I think - Argossy(??) which contained mainly fiction but a few 'scientific' articles as well. I'm pretty sure she read a story in this magazine that may have been written by Ray Bradbury, which she recounted to me (at about 6 years old it took a bit of 'Head Getting Round' but I think I got there)

The main premise of the story was that a race of people worshipped a 'God' who only passed through their world once in a particular cycle of time, and this was a huge and cataclysmic event. It turned out that this 'God' was a suburban commuter, on his way to work on a train ....

It's a little hazy - and I could be wrong about the author - anyone else remember it? Anyhow - it fits in with your query though - sort of -and yes, it is an idea that has given me many a pause for thought over the years .....
 
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