[Setekh]

Things always lose energy.

Are we going to end up in a cold universe?

Why can stuff like leaves be generated by fractals? What other stuff? Are Mandelbrot sets in nature somewhere too?

Does the universe answer to a single equation that accounts for everything?

Sorry guys, I'm just seeing how much maths is involved in life. Heck, even our perceptions can all be recorded and stored - digitally? Pixels and sounds, definitely yes - but feelings? And all my renders, models, it's all digital. Damn maths...

Any thoughts?

[wEvil]

Are we going to end up in a cold universe?

The univserse will because its flying apart faster and faster and eventually all the matter will decay into energy, which will be VERY spread out.

Why can stuff like leaves be generated by fractals? What other stuff? Are Mandelbrot sets in nature somewhere too?

Fractals are merely good ways of coming up with complex geometry that isnt repetitive.  works the same way noise and cellular procedural textures work.  They really arent anything like leaves..they're just made to look like them.  If the camera got closup they'd look awful. Equations can approximate real life but never simulate it because real life is unpredictable at the base (quantum) level.

Does the universe answer to a single equation that accounts for everything?

Probably not.  Search for Grand Unification Theories in the local library

several whacko quantum theories (more fiction than anything else) put where our memories are stored in a different plane of existance.  So, when a particle decays it doesnt just blow up, it falls through into this other plane and some of the energy is displaced into our plane of existance.

I remember that some research put the number of bits needed to store an entire human personality (memories and all) at about 5 petabytes.  We just need to work out how the brain stores information and then we can see if this capacity is large enough to hold the memories and personality.  If its not..there must be somewhere for it all to go.  

Anyway..most of these answers will only bear fruit about 30-50 years from now.  Any kind of bioscience will be hampered by these idiot anti-genetics people and its a vital tool we need to understand ourselves.

I cant beleive i just wrote all this :0/

------------------
I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired!!

[NeoHunter]

Actually, I can't believe I even tryied to understand a word you guys are saying here.

------------------
GTD Excellence Webmaster
NeoHunter<                                  [b][email protected][/b]                                                >

[Nico]

Setekh, you ieed to go out with your girlfriend, that's better for you  

[Setekh]

Actually, I just came back from one of my school's drama productions, and the play had a few of those elements in it. As well as the butterfly effect. Just got me thinking...

[Darkage]

I thought you guy's where talking about pizza

------------------
                                   
------------------
                            [email protected]                          Staff member of
Inferno,
Don't loose
your headz
over it.    
Soc Inferno
Project Rebellion
Gost of the past
iqc 102628858

[QXMX]

As for losing energy, if one thing loses energy, something else must gain.

As for the expanding universe, have you read "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking.  It's does a good job of explaining stuff like this.

------------------
.....File not found....please enter password

Webmaster of Subspace Zero

Co-Creator, GroundZero
ICQ# 117983680

[Eishtmo]

The Universe may grow cold thanks to entropy.  Its called the "Heat Death of the Universe," and I frankly don't like it.  It says that the Universe just keeps expanding and slowly, every star, every galaxy, simply blink out.  And eventually, at some point, the Universe's average temperature drops down to Absolute Zero.  Personally, I'd rather go out in a Big Crunch.

But the evidence to support a Big Crunch is getting smaller and smaller every day.  Right now, evidence says the Universe is actually expanding at an accelerater rate, possibly due to some quantum affect.  This has me completely bummed.

I can't answer jack on fractals, I know next to nothing about them.

But I do know about the Universe, and I can tell you, odds are good there is a "Theory of Everything."  There's a couple ideas running around from Quantum Gravity to SuperString Theory, all could possibly lead toward a Theory of Everything.  I should note now that the Grand Unification Theory is not one of those theories, its one of the steps.  They're trying to link togeather the Weak nuclear force, the magnetic force, and the Strong nuclear force into one.  Then, they'll try to pull Gravity in to make a Theory of Everything.  GUTs (as they are called) haven't panned out yet, but they're working on it.

------------------
Visit Warpstorm.  Do it now.

---------

I know there is a method, but all I see is madness.

[Nico]

 

Originally posted by Eishtmo:
I frankly don't like it

Don't worry, you won't see it lol

[KillMeNow]

the main problem with a unification theary is quantum gravity - we understand very little about it unlike normal everyday gravity which we understand very well with tahnks going to albert instein mostly -  and fractals if i'm not veyr much mistake are repetative - i have a fractal generator on my computer just creates nice pathersn but no matter how far in you soom the smae pattern is repeated over and over and over like the leaves ona  fern each division is an exact copy jsut smaller than the previous one

and yes the universe will end up veyr cold but i dont believe it can ever be absolute zero since energy cant be destroyed it can only be converted but evenually it will be so spaced out and so low frequency its as good as absolute zero

what i want to know is will that effect zero point energy cause if we can still harness that we could conciabliy survive  alternativly athough complete guess work but we might find another universe to move to or even create a new one - not quite as incredulas as it seems - there are quantum flactuations all over the place all we need to do is isolate one with the correct properitys gravity light energy basically the same laws of physics as this one or perphaps new ones that allow faster than light travel etc but close enough so we can survive then  artificially prevent it from collapsing again and then you have a big bang i dont know whether this ouwl replace the exsisting universe - this would be bad since it would kill you as you created it but if it forumed into the cosmos without displacing this universe then perhaps it would be possible to create a bridge between the two especially if they had the same laws  i imagine this would be easier - anyway i would not fear the end of the universe is at least trillions of years in teh future -  i cincerly doubt any of us will live that long =) that would be a night mare - wouldn't say no to 400 years though

but just think if we created a new universe life would almost certainly develop there - would that make us gods?

[Unidan]

 

Originally posted by Eishtmo:
The Universe may grow cold thanks to entropy.  Its called the "Heat Death of the Universe," and I frankly don't like it.  It says that the Universe just keeps expanding and slowly, every star, every galaxy, simply blink out.  And eventually, at some point, the Universe's average temperature drops down to Absolute Zero.

Yes, but by that time we'll be creating our own stars planets, and maybe (not really) dimensions. But I favor the Big Crunch more.

I have another idea, what if the big crunch was also the Big Bang? What I'm saying is:

1: Big Bang
2: Universe Expands
3: Universe Stops
4: Universe Starts Shrinking
5: Universe Gradually Picks Up Speed
6: Universe Implodes On Itself
7: As all the energy impacts, it explodes in another big bang.
8: Repeat steps 1 - 7

Rebirth


------------------
My E-Mail=     [email protected]    

If Indiana Jones and Han Solo were in a fight... who would win?

If you figure out what this number means you win a prize
26724 2337

I am the Parser Breaker!!!

[Shrike]

 

Originally posted by Unidan:
I have another idea, what if the big crunch was also the Big Bang? What I'm saying is:

That's the 'pulsating' version.  It was thought to be one of the more likely theories... however, with the recent data that shows there is an 'antigravity' force (the infamous cosmological constant) working to speed up the universe's expansion, as Eish says, it's seeming less and less likely.

[Sandwich]

My question is this: how do we know that the universe is actually expanding? We can observe the motion of the "near" and "semi-near" stellar objects, but consider that the universe is spread out in a huge sphere. We can only see an extremely small part of it; just look at the pictures from the Hubble Deep Field to see for yourself.

So how do we know that the motion that is being detected is the expansion of the universe? It could just as easily be the contraction, which would explain why things are speeding up.

Kinda scary thought, actually...

------------------
America, stand assured that Israel truly understands what you are going through.

"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[jonskowitz]

The problemb with the "pulating Crunch/Bang" is it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  It's the same thing that defeated Wheeler when he was trying to shoot-down the Black hole theories.  You cannot go from a lower energy state to a higher one without injecting additional energy into the equasion.

  What I find most likely is that eventually all matter will coalse into black holes, which will continue to coalse into bigger holes until there's only one big hole left.  That megahole will continually "evaporate" (see "Wormholes and Timewarps" by Kip Thorn) until it is gone and the universe is finally at a state of infinite entropy.

That's my postulated theory based on everything that I've read on the matter anyway...

[KillMeNow]

yes that is the most likely outcome - however the black holes will radiate energy so even after that they wont completely die off - adn tehre should still be energy poping out of quamtum fluctutations and being such right back in - all you need ot so is to stop it being sucked back in and energy - i think this is what zero point energy is based on but not 100% about 60%  hmmmm acually 50%

[Setekh]

I can explain fractal geometry.

Okay. Take any old fuction... like this.

y = x^2 + c

Where c is a constant. Now, we are going to solve y where x is a complex number.

A complex number is one which comprises of two components - a real number (one that can be expressed with decimals, fractions, whatever) and an imaginary numbers. Imaginary numbers are all multiples of i (i being the square root of -1).

Now, once we solve y, we input that into x, and iterate the function - perform it again. If we used real numbers instead of complex numbers, the results of the iteration would always climb to infinity forever. However, because complex numbers are wierd, some of them do not follow this behaviour. They bounce back and forth between different numbers, return to their original complex number, even get smaller.

Now to graph this with fractal geometry, we do the following. For all those numbers that perform as expected, and get bigger to infinity forever, paint them a certain colour based on their escape velocity - say, bright colours for numbers that escape to infinity fastest, and darker colours for numbers that escape to infinity, but slower.

All the numbers that do the wierd thing, we paint black.

Then, what we get is a graph - a very wierd shape - and using y = x^2 + c, we get what is called the Mandelbrot set. The trick is with fractal geometry, is that if we magnify into any area, we will eventually find the exact same Mandelbrot set again. It recurs on itself. And that's fractal geometry...

[Setekh]

Here's a vanilla Mandelbrot (simply y = x^2 + c):

 

And here's my take on it, after fiddling around with some algorithms and some post-production...

 

Array™ version here.

[Jabu]

 

[Setekh]

Yeah, pretty cool huh?  

[Eishtmo]

 

Originally posted by sandwich:
My question is this: how do we know that the universe is actually expanding?

It all comes down to the math, and the math says the Universe is expanding.  We know.

 

Originally posted by jonskowitz:
The problemb with the "pulating Crunch/Bang" is it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Actually, no it doesn't.  You see, in a Big Crunch everything, stars, planets, nebulas, space, time, energy, EVERYTHING is destroyed.  The laws of physics would fly right out the window, along with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  The fact is, we don't know enough about the Universe to even being to speculate on what would happen in such a situtation.  Hell, we barely understand the Big Bang or even Black Holes!

And venom, you don't know me very well, do you?

------------------
Visit Warpstorm.  Do it now.

---------

I know there is a method, but all I see is madness.