Related papers: Joining inner space to outer space
We discuss how developments in physics often imply in the need that spacetime acquires an increasingly richer and complex structure. General Relativity was the first theory to show us the way to connect space and time with the physical…
The purpose of the paper is five-fold: (a) Argue that the question in the title can be presented in a meaningful manner and that it requires an answer. (b) Discuss the conventional answers and explain why they are unsatisfactory. (c)…
The goal of this article is to invite the reader to get to know and to get involved into higher Teichm\"uller theory by describing some of its many facets.
The paper attempts to describe the space of possible mind designs by first equating all minds to software. Next it proves some interesting properties of the mind design space such as infinitude of minds, size and representation complexity…
In this paper we discuss various possibilities of using X-ray observations to gain information about the large-scale structure of the Universe. After reviewing briefly the current status of these investigations we explore different ways of…
Astrobiology is usually defined as the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. As such it is inherently interdisciplinary and cannot help but engender a worldview infused by cosmic and evolutionary…
In this brief essay we consider the concept of beginning in cosmology. It can be applied to the Universe as a whole, as well as to various epochs in the cosmic history and major structures as we can see them today.
The goal of this paper is to experiment new math concepts and theories, especially if they run counter to the classical ones. To prove that contradiction is not a catastrophe, and to learn to handle it in an (un)usual way. To transform the…
A brief essay on how studying neutrinos can help us to better understand the Universe.
``One could imagine that as a result of enormously extended astronomical experience, the entire universe consists of countless identical copies of our Milky Way, that the infinite space can be partitioned into cubes each containing an…
The purpose of this paper is to survey the possible topologies of branching space-times, and, in particular, to refute the popular notion in the literature that a branching space-time requires a non-Hausdorff topology.
An introduction to the physics and mathematics of the expanding universe, using no more than high-school level / undergraduate mathematics. Covered are the basics of scale factor expansion, the dynamics of the expanding universe, various…
The purpose of this essay is to trace the historical development of geometry while focusing on how we acquired mathematical tools for describing the "shape of the universe." More specifically, our aim is to consider, without a claim to…
This paper explores the fundamental causal limits on how much of the universe we can observe or affect. It distinguishes four principal regions: the affectable universe, the observable universe, the eventually observable universe, and the…
The expansion of the Universe is the basis of modern cosmology. This chapter outlines the theory behind the expansion of the universe, including the cosmological principle, distances, velocities, and accelerations. We provide basic…
Let's have $n$ points in the space such that the maximum distance between any of them is $a$. We prove that there exists a sphere of radius $r \leq a \frac{\sqrt(6)}{4}$ that contains in its interior or on its surface all these points.…
This is a broad and in places unconventional overview of the strengths and shortcomings of our standard models of fundamental physics and of cosmology. The emphasis is on ideas that have accessible experimental consequences. It becomes…
Scientists have measured that what we can see of space is about a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion (10^81) times the volume of an average human. Inflationary theory suggests that the entirety of space…
This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us…
Many cosmological models assume or imply that the total size of the universe is very large, perhaps even infinite. Here we argue instead that the universe might be comparatively small, in fact not much larger than the currently observed…