There are so many discussions happening here in the comments. Philosophy, statistics, infinity, quantum mechanics. I'm loving all of it! 🤓 It's the _perfect_ response to this video.
If speed of light is not constant and it was much much faster in the beginning and its slowing down, it’ll explain the inflation as well as why it appears further galaxies are getting away faster and appear speeding up in current slot of light speed. Maybe time stops when the universe reaches absolute zero and our only frame of reference for it is infinite time.
Already the ancient Atomists understood the concept in the video. Given that space and time are infinite, the eternal atoms in the universe will always by chance arrange themselves into a new world after sufficient amount of time, and therefore it is not in need of any Creator.
@@januszdelondres Inflation had to occur _after_ matter and light was created. The entire purpose of inflation is to give matter and light time to mix in the early universe.
Maybe the instance of THIS (our) universe is one of all REAL implementations of an endless circuit of quantumphysically realized bounced universes and everybody lives HIS life exact again and again ;)
The late Quentin Crisp said that he never cleaned, because after a while, things didn't get any dirtier. I guess in physics, it would be stated as reaching a saturation point.
That's basically the Boltzman brain, isn't it? But cleaning instead. I propose we call it Boltzman cleaning, requires zero work but most definitely an unreasonably long time.
I’m a science teacher in the UK, I recognise that the amount of thought and and care put into your videos is staggering - it must be like playing Kasparov at chess and mapping out action and response a 100 moves ahead in make this so fluent and effortless. Thank you.
Well in chess you need to keep it [the moves ahead] in your human memory, in creative work you can actually add step by step, correct and adjust. It's like Kasparov having the option to take back moves at any time to create the perfect game. Not as hard as having to keep it in memory.
I think the problem with this argument is that the "rules" for the monkey and air molecules did not change over time. The monkey types forever and the molecules move forever. But in the universe, if everything has moved so far apart that they can't interact with each other, there's no force that can bring them back together. The "rules" changed over time.
Funny thing, I was thinking exactly this but having trouble finding the form of words to express this point. Wouldn't everything have to reverse the expansion of the universe by reversing their trajectories for billions of years ? ..... In other words, the big crunch !
I think The Science Asylum tries to get around the problem you mentioned by using "Infinite Space" in his argument. It works only if he is using Actual infinity (instead of Potential infinity) to describe this "Infinite Space". If he is using an Actual infinity, then it implies at least two things : there is an actual infinite amount of matter in the Infinite Space and there are sections somewhere in the Infinite Space where it's possible for massive amounts of matter to come back together. It looks like our section of Infinite Space would not be one of those sections. The part I'm having trouble with is 10:14 where The Science Asylum says, "Luckily, our universe is expanding forever into an infinite future." Here is where The Science Asylum should have told us if he means an actual infinite future or a potential infinite future. Of course whenever Actual and Potential infinities are brought up some questions have to be asked : How can someone detect if they are on a timeline with an actual infinite future (a timeline made of an infinite number of moments) or if they are on a timeline with a potential infinite future (a finite number of moments that is growing with each new moment being added to it)? What evidence is necessary to determine the universe is an Actual infinity of space? What evidence is necessary to determine the universe is a Potential infinity of space?
What is Missing here is Rodger Penrose. His cyclic cosmology gets around that by using scale invariance: The high entropy future universe forgets its state when only photons whizz around. With No massive particles left, the universe had No size and time doesn't pass, which for All practical purposes is the same as the initial low entrophy state resulting in the Big Bang. However we don't need an infinite future for that to happen by chance, just a Very Long time.
the Library of Babel is one of my all time favorite things to think about. I thought of the concept as a kid & was a little heartbroken to know it was a very old concept. non the less I love & appreciate it
I'm a big fan of Jorge Luis Borges. He allways made tales based on cool concepts. Obviously "The Library of Babel" is great. But I would recommend also "The Aleph".
I love that you clarified that the second law does NOT say that the entropy of the universe MUST increase, just that it TENDS to do. I find it rather annoying that the second law is often incorrectly stated as "The entropy of an isolated system MUST increase or stay the same. It can never decrease." It's much more accurate to say "The entropy of an isolated system TENDS to a maximum". That's partly because, as you said, entropy actually CAN decrease, it's just _really_ unlikely for a system composed of more than a few particles, but also because, even ignoring that possibility, entropy of a finite system CANNOT increase forever, because eventually everything will be as spread out as it possibly can be. At that point, the entropy must either stay the same or decrease because there's simply no way for it increase. That's why we ought to talk about it tending to a maximum, not always increasing no matter what.
"everything will be as spread out as it could possibly be" Not in an expanding universe. As the universe expands, the potential to "spread out" increases.
It's like the inertia in a swinging pendulum. It wants to be in the straight position, but to get there it needs to accelerate towards it. Once it reaches there, it already has intertia and must swing the other way.
@@kidzbop38isstraightfire92 What does that even mean, when a vibration in a particle field is so far away from another that they can never causally interact? Or quantum fluctuations create particles from nothing? I don't see entropy increasing as Mikayla poised....
That's three vsauce references in one video. When will the great minds of Nick Lucid and Michael Stevens collaborate for a project? I want to see The Vscauce Asylum!
@@andrews1795 he would need to start doing more hands on demonstrations. Not that he hasn’t, but once he grows he’ll be able to afford thingy that Vsauce was able to afford around the same subscriber count.
I have found it incredibly beneficial to your educational work that you dissect every detail of a topic, even routinely digging into the etymology of words to illustrate meaning. As you said in one video, "If you want to descend into pedantry, be advised you're talking to the Master!" It really matters in science. Often with other teachers or after reading about something I can be left with, "Yes... but what about?" That rarely happens with your material.
As much as I like the idea of a cyclic universe myself, there's a HUGE problem. In both the room metaphor and the monkey metaphor, infinite repetition is enabled by the existence of spatial boundaries. The walls place a limit on the number of particle configurations in the room, and the number of keys places a limit on the number of character combinations. As far as we can tell, there is no analog for the walls of the room when it comes to the universe. The more interesting question, I think, is whether this concept can answer the question of "fine tuning" without requiring a multiverse. After all, there is a certain sense in which the universe seems to have only so many keys to press (a finite number of particle types and forces), which puts a finite limit on how many types of interactions are physically possible. Moreover, we have discovered that several of the forces we see now are unified at higher energies (meaning a smaller keyboard), and the physical space of the universe was much, much smaller near the Big Bang (meaning faster typing). Assuming the speed of light is constant, the "space of all possible interactions" was explored to the greatest degree close to the Big Bang. If we were to discover that the universal constants are not arbitrary but somehow interdependent (as String Theory seems to suggest), and their relationships could have been mediated by the kinds of high energy interactions that happened near the Big Bang, then Darwinian logic could explain why the constants are the values they are. It's like countless monkeys all jamming out on tiny keyboards in those first few microseconds, their results getting passed through a coherence filter (their interdependence), and getting set as constants as the universe cools.
Don’t you think it’s possible that the universe does actually have a boundary? I’ve been getting strong insights lately telling me that the universe is a bounded infinity, one of many universes within a parent universe, ad infinitum (steady state creation model). Think of a mobias strip or a Klein bottle, or driving on the circumference of a sphere. We can travel infinitely, sure, but the universe itself isn’t infinite. It’s simply a heartbeat, a breath. Expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction. To me it seems so obvious that it can’t be any other way. We just can’t see the whole cycle in our lifetime.
I just got the most simple and elegant explaination for two very difficult concept: Infinity and entropy that I have ever heard. This is coming from a math and chemistry teacher and I have pHd in theoretical physics so I have heard a ton of attempts at explaining entropy and infinity.
I used to watch Vsauce all the time a decade ago and that was a huge inspiration for my interest in physics. Now I'm getting my PhD and get to see you talk about the same concepts in those earlier videos with a little more scientific rigor applied, it's amazing!
I didn’t know a law of truly large number existed, but I always intuitively (sort of…) thought and understood that, given an infinite amount of time, any possible event would happen at some point. Thanks for making it clearer in my mind, pal!
I'm not convinced of this. If I have an infinite string of random numbers 0-9, one possible string is 010101010101 all the way down, never using any of the other possible numbers.
@@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke Right, so: infinity is weird. An infinite list is itself made up of infinitely many infinite lists. This allows there to be an infinite list of 1010101010101etc and also 2020202020202etc. All of these types of lists can be contained within it.
@@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke that isnt really how it works. given an infinite set, any finite set can be found with in it. that is not to say that any infinite set can be found with in it.
@@boycefenn Hmmm there you seem to be flat out denying that there could be an infinite list of only 0's and 1's. Maybe you can expand? I think that given a random list of numbers, the longer that list is, the less likely it will exclude some numbers (or sets of numbers) within it. The less likely it will happen to be all 0's and 1's. So for an infinitely long list, you might say it's infinitely unlikely to end up with all 1's and 0's. That's the strongest rebuttal to what I said I can think of. But I don't think it works, because every unique end result should have the same probability, and finding patterns special is a subjective thing. Like how a royal flush has the same chance of being dealt as any other random hand of cards. Random looking hands just aren't on the winning hands list in the rules, but we could add them and they would be just as rare as a royal flush. If a perfectly random shuffler shuffled a deck of cards, call that arrangement 1. Then it shuffles them again, the chances of getting arrangement 1 again are the same as the chances of putting the deck back into proper order, arranged by suit and size. If an infinite set of purely 0's and 1's isn't allowed because it's too improbable, surely the same can be said of any infinite set? It's like there's an infinitely sided dice, and then of course one of the faces does have 0's and 1's all the way, surely. That is a number, and so our infinity dice can land with that face up just as well as it can any other... surely. :)
That's what I was thinking. It's comforting because if anything that can happen will happen eventually, then that guarantees infinite bliss, but it also guarantees infinite suffering.
@@princesseuphemia1007 bliss feels good because suffering exists. There's no up without down. No good without bad. I'll take existence over voidness everytime.
@@lugaidster Maybe, but I've always wondered if this "we need bad because without it good wouldn't exist" argument isn't just a justification we came up with because we happen to live in a universe with a lot of bad in it that we haven't yet found a way to escape, and since we can't escape it, we have to come up with reasons for why it's okay or why it's better than the theoretical universe with either less or no bad as we know it in our own, just to make it easier to deal with emotionally. The only way we could truly know if the universe with both good and bad in it is better is if we could live in the universe without and then come back and compare the two, but we can't do that. All we can do is try to find meaning in the universe we were dealt, so we come up with reasons why things like intense suffering and death have a good side actually. Whether or not they actually do, I don't know, but it's something to consider.
Modular forms and elliptic curves! Infinite fire revolving around infinite parallels Fractals of infinite reality Each cascading, gliding in an infinite wheel! Tell me the true nature of my reality! - Ziltoid
I always look forward to your videos! A lot of so called scientists either understand math more than they understand science, or they are just terrible at communicating. You are very good at making things conceptual and more reasonable
@@ScienceAsylum It might feel odd for you as creator but for me as viewer it was just part of your style and I always watched (end enjoyed) it to the end.
The real mind Funk with infinity isn't that everything that is possible happens...it's that everything that is possible happens an infinite number of times...
I once tried explaining this concept to someone who claimed that human existence would be meaningless unless humans can create an eternal consciousness. I said that if the universe is eternal, then the chances are an eternal consciousness already exists, because eternity extends both to the past and future, and given eternity, anything that can exist must exist now. He didn't get what I was saying and called me a religious idiot.
@@vejymonsta3006 it doesn't have to be multiple universes, in an infinite universe, if there are a finite number of configuration of atoms, than all configurations exist.
Sorry to be that guy... but that site is just smoke and mirrors. The phrase you're searching for gets hashed, and used as a random seed to generate the background gibberish, and the position the text is found, as well as what book/shelf/page, etc. IT'S A LIE!
@@graybot8064 It's not a lie, it still does what it says. I still think a reversible hash is cool. Theoretically everything is written in there, it just needs to be looked up.
Great video as always Nick! I have a thought from your video: since universe is expanding, there're more and more space/room created every second. And as space expands there're more configurations for particles to be in. So the likelihood of them being in a single spot decreases as space expands. As the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, the probability of a "big bang" repeating itself decreases exponentially. While time is only increasing linearly. Granted that possiblity never goes to zero and with infinite time it always "can" happen, but it's getting less and less likely.
Actually, the remnants running away from their causal patches. It is forbidden to go back to the low entropy state again since the universe is expanding.
Afaik anything outside of the Local Group containing the Milky Way, Andromeda, and their satellite galaxies will eventually be flying away faster than the speed of light.
@@ScienceAsylum On top of that, in an accelerated expanding universe, at some point, each particle will move away from every other particle faster than light (since their distance is greater than the observable universe now). From that point on, it IS impossible for them to ever clump together again. And after the big rip (which i think is also a inevitable consequence of an accelerated expanding universe?) it is even impossible for atoms to ever form again, no? Infinite time cannot fix that in my opinion.
Infinity is a concept, not a number. Very rightly said Nick. All weird things are supposed to happen at infinity. For an e.g. parallel lines (or parallel beam of light rays) meet at infinity. I have always liked to imagine in my head that big bang is not the beginning of universe because an ever flowing journey such as universe' can't begin with a finite event. It doesn't feel right. So 'probably' an infinite number of big bangs had already happened in the past, and an infinite number of big bangs will happen in the future as well. Thanks a lot Nick for this wonderful video. Somehow I feel relieved now. 😊
Wow, by far your best video ever. The simplest explanation of entropy I’ve ever seen, a simple explanation of Hilberts hotel, a great explanation of infinity, followed by a thought provoking idea about the origin of our universe….. what did you eat for breakfast?????? 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
In infinite time, I have typed this sentence and you have read it an infinite number of times. You have give it an infinite number of 👍. Thank you, again. 😁
Not only can BBs happen in an infinite future, they will happen in an infinite future. Your explanation of infinity and the use of the monkey and atoms in a room is excellent!
"Ford, there's an infinite amount of monkeys outside, and they want to discuss a screenplay by Shakespeare, they have worked out.." - Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The biggest problem I see with this is that the probability of all particles coming back together into a singularity is not constant over time, it is ever decreasing as the universe expands. For instance, if the current period of exponential expansion of the universe, where the Hubble constant indeed stays constant, persists, the particles per volume would evolve something like this: d_t = d_0*e^t where d_0 is the particles per volume at the current time, t is the time in seconds and e the fraction of particles per volume remianing after one second of expansion at the current rate (and is thus < 1). If we integrate that from 0 to infinity we get -d_0/log(e), log(e) is a negative number, so we get a finite, positive number. If we assume that the probability of the universe randomly rearranging itself into a (near) singularity is linearly dependent on the density of the universe, we get that this is not actually inevitable, even with infinite time. What's more, the expansion of space is faster than the speed of light across large enough distances. Partcles which are too far apart can actually never reach eachother again, even if they spend the rest of eternity speeding towards eachother at light speed.
Yeah this is a very satisfying theory philosophically, but the fact that the probability is decreasing at an exponential rate makes it unlikely even given infinite time. And that's not even considering that even things like quantum tunneling can't "move" matter faster than light to overcome faster than light expanding space.
Was about to make identical point, less then math, as I never studied physics academically. 2nd law of thermodynamics explicitly talks about a CLOSED system. Issue is the universe, because of its inflation, looks more like an open system, hence it is illogical to apply this law to the whole universe.
I mean, as time approaches infinity, isn't it becoming exceedingly likely that quantum fluctuations alone cause local high energy spots? That is the nice thing about this idea I'd say. My problem with it, is that it is exponentially more likely (as far as I know) to form a universe with just 1 galaxy, which then forms a planet that supports human life over time. But our universe is waaay bigger. Unless it is necessary for it to be so big, to be able to form something like earth, what gives?
I thought about this at some point after learning about the second law of thermodynamics because I was trying to make myself feel better. Then I read an essay by Isaac Asimov that matched my thinking, and now I've seen this video. Well Nick's and Isaac's smarts are enough to make me feel validated.
Best video so far. I knew all of these methaphors, monkey, library, hotel well, but you made it all so easy and digestable then to explain something so insanely complex as the big bang! Brilliant and a lot of fun!!
Most of the currently-observable universe will not be causally connected anymore in, say, 100 billion years because of (accelerating) universe expansion. How can those elementary particles so far apart get close together without violating special relativity?
Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The probability field of every particle extends to infinity in all directions, and is never perfectly zero. In a sense, at every moment all particles have a non zero chance to be in the same location. No movement needed.
@@Tom-u8q That's a tricky question, but it doesn't matter in this case. (i think?) You only need propagation if there is a change. Fields are always and everywhere. A particle can potentially be observed / interacted with, as long as the probability is not zero, regardless of distance and relative speed of other particles. Just like the Tunnel-effect, the particle suddenly "jumps" to a region it couldn't possibly get to via continuous motion. I don't know how this "jump" affects the probability field though, if at all.... ლ(ಠ_ಠ ლ) this might interest you: www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-tunneling-is-not-instantaneous-physicists-show/
It depends on whether it's physically possible that something might make the whole space-time change in a shrinking way at a certain point instead of expanding.
Once we move away from thinking about time as a purely durational dimension, we will quickly unite quantum and relativity. You are on the right track here. :)
If you have trouble reconciling an infinite future with a finite past, bear in mind that Hilbert's Hotel has an infinite number of rooms, but it also has a first room.
It's not hard to imagine a hotel with a first room, but it's weird that our universe would be endless in every direction except one, and it's difficult to imagine a moment with no previous moment. We're always going to think that _something_ must have come before now, even if now were the first moment. How can there ever be no "before"? It boggles the mind.
The Hilbert's hotel also has an infinite number of people in the hallways transitioning to the next room. It's not possible to fill the Hilbert's hotel in a finite amount of time.
Hmm interesting but if they actually started with one room and kept adding rooms, at what point could the hotel have reached an infinite number? It's impossible that way. The hotel had to have infinite rooms from the start.
Subscribed because of the VPN ad spot. Zero disinformation, 100% scientifically rigorous marketing. I lose a lot of faith when I see people advertising something they don't understand to begin with. Very pleasantly surprised!
@5:22 - The Law of Truly Large Numbers: That's the same explanation I use for extraterrestrial life. Life happened once, so there is a chance. Any chance "multiplied by infinity" is 100%. So there are some out there. Thanks for finally giving me the name for this law. I always wondered if it's actually a thing.
I mean that's kind of the whole premise of the Fermi Paradox, the Paradox being that we don't see any evidence of said extraterrestrial life that we should expect (according to this premise at least, which has also been contested ofcourse)
@@l1mbo69 but isn't it in general also hard to find evidence of life? I mean the planet must be located in the Goldy luck zone and needs to have water+carbon and maybe there is a huge random chance that the first microorganism can originate in such conditions. On top of that, everything we see is the past which means there is a certain limit to our visibility to detect life. Which means there aren't infinite places we can look for life
@@AstralBlader1 I already said it is contested and a plethora of arguments have been made to explain the "paradox"/ defend it. That being said, most formulations of Fermi Paradox concern itself with only the Milky Way. The argument is that if an intelligent life only evolved a few million years ago in the opposite corner of the milky way it would have enough time to colonize the entire galaxy as it's only 200,000 light years across. At 5% Light speed travel they would need only 4 Million years. Compare millions of years to how much we have achieved in only last 10K years. Not only that, but they don't even have to physically travel themselves. Self replicating robots can be left to their own devices as they go from planet to planet and they will colonize the galaxy exponentially fast. And this is all just for a few million years at the max, the galaxy has been around for thousands- or multiple billion years. So if intelligent alien life evolved, and also wanted to form an intergalactic civilization they could have done so without a shadow of doubt. So A) intelligent life never emerged B) life in general never emerged C) intelligent life went extinct before becoming intergalactic D) intelligent life may not even want to colonize the galaxy (live out there lives in VR perhaps)
To summarize, according to the law of Truly Large Numbers as it applies to ET life.. we should have already found A LOT of evidence of ET life, even just in our little corner of the Milky Way. Earth would/should have been "colonized" long, long ago.
Ok. Now this is one of the best theories I have ever seen. It takes one of my favourite fun facts , the infinite monkey theorem, and kinda predicts the existence of a multiverse... Or a future that is not so cold and uneventful
I always thought that was a sly way of stating the corollary - some things have always been, and will always continue to be - like her way of telling Neo that something of his spirit/life force/etc existed before his mortal life and would continue afterward, and that his sacrifice would be towards something bigger than him, even if his body's death is inevitable.
Well, the point of the video was that the universe has no end, and therefor it has no beginning. This is compatible with the statement of the (fictional😉) oracle.
Fun fact about the library of babel : Some of the books contains a lot of information, but the entire library contains a very small quantity of information.
I CANNOT believe I found a video perfectly explaining my own hypothesis on the nature of the universe. I've wondered about the possibility that time is actually infinite backwards as well as forwards. I've wondered if our neighborhood of infinite spacetime which we call "the universe" is a tiny and insignificant speck among infinite neighborhoods, separated in space and time by distances unfathomable magnitudes larger than the neighborhoods themselves, but still occupying the same fabric of spacetime that we do. Infinity could be infinitely larger than not only the observable universe, but the unobservable universe, and change how the universe looks beyond the unobservable universe. Who are we to say that the pattern of galaxies that we can see stretches on forever? It could go on for 100,000 septillion lightyears, but then nothing blackness for even more distance than that until there is another neighborhood. When I've asked very educated science-minded people about the singularity and the Big Bang, I often get very definitive answers. "There was no before the Big Bang, that doesn't make sense and here's why. There was no space outside of the singularity, the universe was once the size of the singularity and it continued to expand forever after the Big Bang." Given how theses things are taught, I didn't think I'd find a serious physicist (serious enough lol) actually entertain the idea as if it may be true. Given the size of infinity, I find it very possible the sudden expansion of spacetime that we call the Big Bang was a local event, able to occur due to the sheer quantum possibilities opened up by infinite time, and not an event that lead the expansion of all spacetime everywhere. This doesn't conflict with relativity because while the central location of the Big Bang might be discernable in such a universe, it would be far from the only one, and not the center of the universe. Is there harsh resistance to this idea among scientists? I think we may be uncomfortable acknowledging an idea that indicates the universe is actually so large and non-uniform that cosmology, the science of studying the universe as a single object, is essentially a hopeless endeavor, and in addition to no hope of ever being able to verify whether or not this is the case at all. I guess part of my surprise about hearing this hypothesis coming from a scientist is how untestable it is, which scientists tend to call not science. I get why, but that approach seems take ideas that may exist in actual reality, but aren't testable, and throw them in with mermaids.
An actual infinite is impossible. That's the whole point of Hilbert's Hotel. Just like it would be absurd to add guests to an infinite hotel where a all the rooms are full by moving each guest to the next room, it would be absurd to add another cycle to an infinite number of cycles. Think about it. If there is an infinite number of cycles before we get to this cycle, then we can't get to this cycle.
You've convinced me, we live in a simulation.... or every possible future exists. I'm thinking I dismissed Sean Carroll awhile back (with his many universes) too hastily....
"If the future is infinite, anything that can happen, will... eventually." the problem I see is, if every particle in the universe is moving away from every other at the speed of light, then all of those particles coming back to one spot becomes impossible because the furthest particles would be beyond the cosmic horizon. Right?
@@Fade2GrayOG it doesn't have to be all of the particles happening to all meet up at a single point. Random fluctuations of energy happen all the time in empty space, due to the uncertainty principle. Usually these are very small fluctuations, but what's to stop a sudden, incredibly dense high energy fluctuation from occurring in an empty light-bubble of spacetime 10^^^^^^^^^^^^^10 years from now?
It requires the big bang to spontaneously come into being. Not just from entropy collecting back into a point. Thing is we know it's possible because of the fact we exist, so there must eventually have been the first 'fluctuation' of entropy that given enough time created a universe. That is the only thing that makes sense to me. We have already existed infinitely many times and will be existing again at some point simply because time is infinite. If all of time and space just stopped and became 'nothing', it would be reborn again because some tiny particle needs to go from a higher to a lower state of energy even though moments before it wasn't in a state of entropy at all.
@Remember The FutureAn interesting what if. It is not that the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, per say. Instead the distance between objects gets larger and at a certain point the distance becomes so large that in order, get from one galaxy to the next a person would have to go faster than the speed of light in order to reach the next galaxy. Use the balloon analogy. If you draw any number of points on the surface then blow it up. Every single point would appear to move away from each other. As the balloon gets larger the points move away from each other faster. At a certain distance if you were on one point, the others would appear as if they are receding away faster than the speed of light but it is not. Because the points are not moving (if you deflate the balloon, the points would be right where you drew them), the space between them is expanding. I will admit, if we stick with the balloon analogy there are 3 outcomes. It keeps expanding forever, it pops, or it deflates. While all three are theoretically possible, there is no reason to believe either of the latter since the former is what is happening right now, and has been happening since the begining of what time we could measure. Both of the latter options "could" happen but I'm going with Occam's razor and sticking with the simple solution until we find even thale smallest bit of evidence that contradicts the current state of the universe. Thank you for listing to my TED talk.
One of my thoughts is that if Dark Energy is everywhere in the universe, working like a reverse Gravity, then maybe once all of the particles in the Universe have expanded to the point where the pull from Dark Energy is magnified at a certain point that it causes another Big Bang. Imagine an infinite pull from all sides, ripping a hole in spacetime itself.
Wow okay that's a very very honest and factually accurate vpn ad. I was expecting the usual "overselling" marketing phrases but you surprised me and showed you value your integrity of your labour. Props to you!
But... while the probability of those air molecules being concentrated in one corner of the room is incredibly small ... isn‘t the probability of a universe expanding faster than the speed of light to clump together again exactly 0? It‘s called cosmic event horizon for a reason, right?
I was thinking the same. Then it hit me: Quantum tunnelling. The probability that a particle would quantum tunnel somewhere decreases rapidly with distance, but it never reaches zero. So the probability that a particle from your body would quantum tunnel to somewhere outside the observable universe is extremely (and I mean EXTREMELY) low, but it is not zero. This breaks the speed limit that us mortals are cursed with, that is, the speed of light. Of course, this was considering a single particle. The probability that all the particles in the universe quantum tunneling to the exact same location to start a big bang is, once again, mind bogglingly small. Although mind boggingly small != 0, so the premise of the video still stands. I am not a physicist, just curious about these topics and learned it all from TH-cam, so take all that I say with a grain of salt. But who knows, it just might be that this is the answer.
@@Raven74947 The universe is already expanding faster than the speed of light. But space itself is moving apart not an object in space, so no relativistic effects.
7:11 That depends on what type of infinity you're talking about. If we're working with infinite ordinal numbers, addition isn't commutative. The first infinite ordinal is usually denoted ω. 3+ω=ω≠ω+3. Vsauce did a video on this a while ago called "How to count past infinity." If we're working with the infinite cardinal numbers (yes, mathematicians *do* call them numbers), then addition is commutative and adding finite numbers to them doesn't change anything. To be fair though, in the context Nick is talking about, it makes the most sense to consider infinity as a limit, in which case it's just shorthand for a function or process which grows arbitrarily large.
I think it would help us a lot to think about infinity as a number of a different type. Similar to imaginary or complex numbers. Infinity is the result of 1/0. Lets call it I. So x=3/0 is 3*I. And this I is not a number on the number line but all numbers at the same time. Like a function with multiple solutions. Same with imaginary numbers this might have consequences in physics. Especially relativity, singularities and quantum mechanics. Just my 2 Cent
Sure, I do. There's one about to happen in about 38 seconds - just 'bout a 104 millimetres from your left ear. Hmmm... Y'all, might wanna move just a little bit to your right. 'K. Maybe, juuuust a bit more than that - y'know, like 5.713 tera light years...
I just had a crazy but fascinating thought: since the universe was uniform when it began ( even if enclosed in a very, very, very small amount of space); could it be that after the universe we live in results in a "uniform" emptiness in the far future, that itself is the new point from which the next big bang will occur? Essentially making that unimaginably large amount of space, the next "point" for the next big bang- the universe that comes from that, would be orders of magnitude bigger than what we have today, but the civilizations of that bigger universe wouldn't even know the difference. I hope that made sense!
One hypotesis that you brought during the whole video about the room and molecules is that it was in a FINITE room with INFINTE amount of time to colapse into the corner, but as you said later, the universe if INFINITE in space (all directions) and INIFNITE in time (one direction). So to think about convergence in and INFINITE amount of time of the particles you need to consider which INFINITE is "bigger" and if there can exist a limit of which one is growing faster ...
BTW if true, this also means that every conscious person, being a finite pattern, occurs an infinite number of times. "You" are a somewhat fuzzy pattern, changing as you grow older and gain experience from this instance. "You" are closest, statistically to most other humans, particularly relatives and those sharing your life, but there is a spectrum all the way down to insects (and below?). If there is one 'field' of consciousness, then free will is expressing a choice to change your pattern, to move it along the field in a desirable/optimal direction. You would expect that those who use the universe around them to forge their ideas would converge on similar patterns, become more alike...and they do. One might even speculate on a "merging" (becoming overlapped, or similar to a large degree) of such like minds, as they are all following the same giant script. (Buddha, God, etc.) Those who prefer constructs that are not based on the universe around them (dogma) tend to make up any old shit, of which there is an infinite supply, and so will always diverge from others rather than converge. So although there are infinite ways to descend into irrational "hell", there are also infinite paths to the common good, and infinite time to get there. Metaphysics can be scary, but as a guru once said: If you must fall down a well, a bottomless one is the best kind.
I believed this when I was a child, really I thought thats what reality was when I was 2-3 years old, I think it was similar to Murphy's law, stating that everything that can happen will happen, and never stop, apply infinite possibilities to infante time, every possibly will be exercised, but not by a sequence, so life is going to be experienced like this again because we know it's possible as we are here now, but upon further thinking if it was like a quantum lottery, say each atom was a lottery ball numbered, the odds of each atom being the way it is say like predicting the lottery everyday for a thousand years, then although it's possible, the odds are astronomical and I dont think every possibility would be, but saying that, time never ending, I really dont know, I think we sre part of a greater conscious one that will return, I hope not but I fear this is our reality.
@@Δενβρισκωνικ That's the lottery winner paradox. The person who wins the ticket feels special since the odds were low but for the lottery organization it was ~100% chanse of having *SOMEONE* win since that's the rules they arranged.
Nothing has changed. There’s been two options: either its infinite, or its finite. If finite, then it probably has no boundary (space will not be flat, but curved.) If its infinite, then there’s probably no boundary (space will be flat.) There are other scenarios, but these are the two most likely.
No boundaries to a finite curved space time is analogous to the surface of our moon. There is a finite amount of surface area, but you can walk in any given direction just as far as you wish, and never come to an end.
We are inside the big bang, science told me that it originated from everywhere when I asked "where was the big bang", they told me that because all the matter in the universe came from the big bang. My question should have been, "Which point is most matter moving away from." The singularity may have been bigger than the observable universe, but we can still pinpoint its center by following the direction of most mass backward. It has boundaries, just like any other explosion/expansion but outside the big bang has no boundaries that we could ever be aware of.
@@crazyfakar1 There is no central point to everything. The big bang just means that things started to move away from everything else, equally. If it exploded, then yes, there’d be a central point, but there isn’t. But its not even that stuff is moving, but rather the space between stuff is increasing. An expanding balloon helps to visualize.
@@tbardoni5065 Even a balloon has a centre, science can't tell because the singularity was bigger than the observable universe, if it is expanding then it is expanding away from somewhere, from here it looks like it is expanding from everywhere, because of relative motion and the doppler effect, but if the big bang was smaller, we could easily see. From outside the big bang, it would be a different story. The big bang might not be the entire universe. "Everything moved away from everything equally" Not the matter that makes me, it all moved together, came together to make me. That would be entropy at its finest, everything equally being equal to everything else.
Thank you for reminding me what the Library of Babel was called. Heard about it years ago, thought it was awesome, and then forgot the name/url and couldn't remember the specific video I saw it in lol. After all this time I finally can share it again.
That got me thinking if we really take law of large numbers into account then it is also certain that long after a person dies, the particles in the universe would recreate a perfect copy of his body and brain and his consciousness as well for that matter, which implies that death is nothing but a long sleep, that is profound, isn't it? 🙂
You can apply the same principle for space instead of time as well. There is a finite amount of way in which you can arrange particles in space roughly the size of a human. So given infinite space, it is likely that the exact arrangement of particles in your body is present right now somewhere really really far.
@@SaravanaKumar-dd7re yes I knew that already its about the distance of 10^70 metres from you less than googol metres though, numberphile had a great video on that go check that out, it's titled somewhat related to the googol number. Thanks for sharing nonetheless. 🙂
What about the expansion, though? Everything is flying away from everything else (on the cluster level at least). How could random walks result in everything coming together again? Also, isn't the expansion faster than the speed of light on large enough scales?
@Remember The Future the speed of expansion is the same everywhere but it isn't necessarily the speed of light. The more space, the more expansion between two bodies. The smaller the universe gets, the slower the compression.
First of all, this is a great video on a really thought provoking topic. But I do have a nagging question. If the universe carries on expanding to such an extent that most particles in it are causally disconnected from one another, how can they all condense into a single point to produce a singularity?
There are definitely problems that would need to be addressed. Ludwig Boltzmann came up with this before we knew the universe was expanding. Then again, it was also before quantum mechanics, so there might be a solution there.
Btw, if understood the idea correctly, there is a possibility that big bangs happen infinitely in different places, and our big bang is not a unique one. So elementary particles constantly fly in the infinite space in all directions, and from time to time some amount of particles happen to be in one place giving birth to a new big bang. But in this case there must be some amount of particles flying into our "big bang bubble" from the "outside". Is there any evidence of that?
So, if I understand correctly, this video is saying we have few reasons to believe our current model of the universe will allow matter to come together again to fuel another big bang. I understand and agree. I wouldn't say this necessarily disproves recurring big bangs though. Just casts doubt on this specific theory. In order for us to really know, we'd need insight on why our big bang happened (and whether it might happen again). It's a black box though. We have no idea what came before and there's a good chance we never will. I see why this is more akin to a philosophical debate. It's borders on being metaphysical.
Hilbert's Hotel - Veritasium uploaded a (faulty) video about it just a couple of days ago, titled _"How to Exceed Infinity."_ Causally related, or just coincidence? Because, as you said, given enough time, it was guaranteed that two guys would independently mention it in their videos just days apart. (And yes, I noticed your Vsauce t-shirt. Nice!)
@@ebenolivier2762 Because Derek assumes that there are an *uncountably* infinite number of passengers in the last bus. That's wrong because the passengers are discrete individuals, not continuous like points in a plane. So they are *countably* infinite.
@@ebenolivier2762 A more detailed explanation: Derek uses infinitely long strings of A and B as passenger names. These are, of course, equivalent to real numbers, which are uncountably infinite. He assigns these real numbers to passengers. Then he says, without proof, that all the real numbers have been assigned to all the passengers. That's the mistake. Next, he tries to assign the same real numbers to the countably infinite hotel rooms. Using Cantor's diagonal, he shows that many real numbers are left out. So the real numbers outnumber the hotel rooms-that's not in doubt. But because earlier he incorrectly assumed that there are as many passengers as real numbers, he concludes-incorrectly-that there are more passengers than rooms. To see why he's wrong about the passenger size, you can apply the same Cantor's diagonal to the real numbers and the passengers, and show that there are fewer passengers than real numbers. For sure, he removed the seats in the bus to make this correspondence difficult, but that didn't change the passengers from countably infinite to uncountably infinite. So the correct conclusion is that you can always accommodate any number of passengers in the hotel. Note that if say there's nothing wrong in assuming that the passengers are uncountably infinite, then there's nothing preventing the number of rooms from being uncountably infinite either. So again you can accommodate all of them.
@@nHans Okay so you're not nitpicking his actual argument, but how the the video is presented. He never had to prove that the number of passengers in the last bus was equivalent to the size of the real numbers, because that's how he DEFINED the bus in a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT. Saying that the passengers can't be uncountable because a passenger is something discrete rather than continuous is like saying that there can't be an infinite number of passengers because there's no such thing as an infinitely long bus. True if we're applying real world logic, but missing the point of the video.
@@nHans I can't see anything wrong with the way he presented it. No proof is required that all the real numbers are assigned to passengers, this is the definition of the bus. He even says: "On this bus there is a person with every possible sequence of these 2 letters". This doesn't need to be proved, it is a statement of what the bus (a set) contains (all the real numbers). Following on from this statement is the fact that you cannot assign all real numbers (passengers) to integers (hotel rooms). As with all analogies this hotel analogy does not have the rigor of a mathematical proof, but I think his presentation of David Hilbert's analogy is as good as it can get.
Infinity cannot be comprehended. It exists conceptually outside of our understanding and does allow anything to happen eventually. The fact that anything exists ever is mind blowing
I think I never commented this: i admire your way of explaining. Few days ago i grabbed my camera and explained an easy topic "linear motion". After watching my own attemt I recognized: i'm sooooo slooooow :D it was funny
There are so many discussions happening here in the comments. Philosophy, statistics, infinity, quantum mechanics. I'm loving all of it! 🤓 It's the _perfect_ response to this video.
If speed of light is not constant and it was much much faster in the beginning and its slowing down, it’ll explain the inflation as well as why it appears further galaxies are getting away faster and appear speeding up in current slot of light speed. Maybe time stops when the universe reaches absolute zero and our only frame of reference for it is infinite time.
Already the ancient Atomists understood the concept in the video. Given that space and time are infinite, the eternal atoms in the universe will always by chance arrange themselves into a new world after sufficient amount of time, and therefore it is not in need of any Creator.
@@januszdelondres Inflation had to occur _after_ matter and light was created. The entire purpose of inflation is to give matter and light time to mix in the early universe.
Can you discuss Roger Penrose’s idea that time doesn’t mean anything when mass disappears?
Maybe the instance of THIS (our) universe is one of all REAL implementations of an endless circuit of quantumphysically realized bounced universes and everybody lives HIS life exact again and again ;)
I'm not lazy, I'm just experimenting if my room randomly goes to a clean state given no cleaning is done in an unreasonable time
Spontaneous cleaning
The late Quentin Crisp said that he never cleaned, because after a while, things didn't get any dirtier. I guess in physics, it would be stated as reaching a saturation point.
Document, document, document.
That's basically the Boltzman brain, isn't it? But cleaning instead. I propose we call it Boltzman cleaning, requires zero work but most definitely an unreasonably long time.
It's more probable for you to just randomly hallucinate that your room is cleaned than it actually happening.
Given an infinite amount of weeks you and Veritasium will both discuss Hilbert's Hotel in the same week.
3 cheers to the Indian mathematician *Ramanujan* who taught the concept of *infinity* to the world👍
U mean Hibert's Hotel.
Only a small number of weeks sufficed.
I was just about to type this 😂
I thought I was having deja Vu. Lol
I’m a science teacher in the UK, I recognise that the amount of thought and and care put into your videos is staggering - it must be like playing Kasparov at chess and mapping out action and response a 100 moves ahead in make this so fluent and effortless. Thank you.
Thanks for appreciating the effort 🤓
@@ScienceAsylum
I do too. You must have quite a team. Please don't tell me you do it yourself, I'd defenestrate my comp.
Well in chess you need to keep it [the moves ahead] in your human memory, in creative work you can actually add step by step, correct and adjust. It's like Kasparov having the option to take back moves at any time to create the perfect game.
Not as hard as having to keep it in memory.
@@JTuaim I think it's mostly just him and his wife.
I think the problem with this argument is that the "rules" for the monkey and air molecules did not change over time. The monkey types forever and the molecules move forever. But in the universe, if everything has moved so far apart that they can't interact with each other, there's no force that can bring them back together. The "rules" changed over time.
Kinda agree here. Wonder if Nick has anything sensible to say about this
I was disappointed I had to scroll so far down to find this.
Funny thing, I was thinking exactly this but having trouble finding the form of words to express this point. Wouldn't everything have to reverse the expansion of the universe by reversing their trajectories for billions of years ? ..... In other words, the big crunch !
I think The Science Asylum tries to get around the problem you mentioned by using "Infinite Space" in his argument. It works only if he is using Actual infinity (instead of Potential infinity) to describe this "Infinite Space". If he is using an Actual infinity, then it implies at least two things : there is an actual infinite amount of matter in the Infinite Space and there are sections somewhere in the Infinite Space where it's possible for massive amounts of matter to come back together. It looks like our section of Infinite Space would not be one of those sections.
The part I'm having trouble with is 10:14 where The Science Asylum says, "Luckily, our universe is expanding forever into an infinite future."
Here is where The Science Asylum should have told us if he means an actual infinite future or a potential infinite future.
Of course whenever Actual and Potential infinities are brought up some questions have to be asked :
How can someone detect if they are on a timeline with an actual infinite future (a timeline made of an infinite number of moments) or if they are on a timeline with a potential infinite future (a finite number of moments that is growing with each new moment being added to it)?
What evidence is necessary to determine the universe is an Actual infinity of space?
What evidence is necessary to determine the universe is a Potential infinity of space?
What is Missing here is Rodger Penrose. His cyclic cosmology gets around that by using scale invariance: The high entropy future universe forgets its state when only photons whizz around. With No massive particles left, the universe had No size and time doesn't pass, which for All practical purposes is the same as the initial low entrophy state resulting in the Big Bang. However we don't need an infinite future for that to happen by chance, just a Very Long time.
I don't know how you do it, but your ability to one-up anyone else on TH-cam on sensational topics like this one is the gold we come back for.
Bravo!
That's actually very true 😁Science Asylum's explanations have always made more sense than any other channel I've seen.
the Library of Babel is one of my all time favorite things to think about. I thought of the concept as a kid & was a little heartbroken to know it was a very old concept. non the less I love & appreciate it
Crazy that it kind of exists now too, programmatically
I'm a big fan of Jorge Luis Borges.
He allways made tales based on cool concepts.
Obviously "The Library of Babel" is great. But I would recommend also "The Aleph".
bakemeat interplay tomboy sensationalist
I love that you clarified that the second law does NOT say that the entropy of the universe MUST increase, just that it TENDS to do. I find it rather annoying that the second law is often incorrectly stated as "The entropy of an isolated system MUST increase or stay the same. It can never decrease." It's much more accurate to say "The entropy of an isolated system TENDS to a maximum". That's partly because, as you said, entropy actually CAN decrease, it's just _really_ unlikely for a system composed of more than a few particles, but also because, even ignoring that possibility, entropy of a finite system CANNOT increase forever, because eventually everything will be as spread out as it possibly can be. At that point, the entropy must either stay the same or decrease because there's simply no way for it increase. That's why we ought to talk about it tending to a maximum, not always increasing no matter what.
"everything will be as spread out as it could possibly be" Not in an expanding universe. As the universe expands, the potential to "spread out" increases.
It's like the inertia in a swinging pendulum. It wants to be in the straight position, but to get there it needs to accelerate towards it. Once it reaches there, it already has intertia and must swing the other way.
@@kidzbop38isstraightfire92 What does that even mean, when a vibration in a particle field is so far away from another that they can never causally interact? Or quantum fluctuations create particles from nothing? I don't see entropy increasing as Mikayla poised....
Infinity is not a number. It is the idea that the list never ends. Good one.
And some people still try to divide and multiply with it…:)
@@juzoli It is for comparison.
@@juzoli 1÷0! 😁
Everybody in their mother knows that at this point
@@johnmckown1267 ERROR! ERROR! YOUR PHONE WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN 5 MINUTES!
"If you flip a penny enough times, it'll land on its edge."
"If you flip a penny enough times, it'll land as an aardvark."
it will eventually chip away to look exactly like an aardvark
That's pretty much how the infinite probability drive in Hitchhiker's guide to the universe works.
Since i started watching your videos i seriously never skipped a single one of it. Its just too awesome 🤩 🤩🤩🤩🤩
Thanks! 😀 Glad you like my work.
@@ScienceAsylum 🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬🤯🗽☮️💟🌈🤖🌌
I watch a LOT of TH-cam. I feel the same way. This is the first content creator I've ever financially supported.
Great stuff.
@@MsCravenMoorehead 🗽🚀🤯💥☮️💟🌈🎬🎬🎬 🧪🧪🧪...This Asylum is leading the science communication revolution😎
Okhomiya neki? Ranjit
That's three vsauce references in one video. When will the great minds of Nick Lucid and Michael Stevens collaborate for a project? I want to see The Vscauce Asylum!
Hey for reals though. I got Vscauce vibes towards the end
That
Would
Be
Fking
Awsome
Give it unreasonable amount of time and it'll surely happen.
@@andrews1795 he would need to start doing more hands on demonstrations. Not that he hasn’t, but once he grows he’ll be able to afford thingy that Vsauce was able to afford around the same subscriber count.
Can we add joe scott to this concoction? Oh and simon whistler too! A smorgasbord of smarty pants youtube facts boy excelences!
I have found it incredibly beneficial to your educational work that you dissect every detail of a topic, even routinely digging into the etymology of words to illustrate meaning. As you said in one video, "If you want to descend into pedantry, be advised you're talking to the Master!"
It really matters in science. Often with other teachers or after reading about something I can be left with, "Yes... but what about?" That rarely happens with your material.
I was expecting the end to be "In an ever-expanding infinite... Space Time."
Matt is such a legend, he casts his shadow everywhere :D
I considered saying that for a moment... but then was like "Nah!"
@@ScienceAsylum maybe you should have used an asylum instead of a hotel.
@@ScienceAsylum I felt that
I was waiting for that “space time”
As much as I like the idea of a cyclic universe myself, there's a HUGE problem. In both the room metaphor and the monkey metaphor, infinite repetition is enabled by the existence of spatial boundaries. The walls place a limit on the number of particle configurations in the room, and the number of keys places a limit on the number of character combinations. As far as we can tell, there is no analog for the walls of the room when it comes to the universe.
The more interesting question, I think, is whether this concept can answer the question of "fine tuning" without requiring a multiverse. After all, there is a certain sense in which the universe seems to have only so many keys to press (a finite number of particle types and forces), which puts a finite limit on how many types of interactions are physically possible. Moreover, we have discovered that several of the forces we see now are unified at higher energies (meaning a smaller keyboard), and the physical space of the universe was much, much smaller near the Big Bang (meaning faster typing). Assuming the speed of light is constant, the "space of all possible interactions" was explored to the greatest degree close to the Big Bang. If we were to discover that the universal constants are not arbitrary but somehow interdependent (as String Theory seems to suggest), and their relationships could have been mediated by the kinds of high energy interactions that happened near the Big Bang, then Darwinian logic could explain why the constants are the values they are. It's like countless monkeys all jamming out on tiny keyboards in those first few microseconds, their results getting passed through a coherence filter (their interdependence), and getting set as constants as the universe cools.
We live in a simulation... Elon Musk has said there's very little chance we don't.
@@MrMichaelFire Elon Musk said it so it must be true.
Don’t you think it’s possible that the universe does actually have a boundary? I’ve been getting strong insights lately telling me that the universe is a bounded infinity, one of many universes within a parent universe, ad infinitum (steady state creation model). Think of a mobias strip or a Klein bottle, or driving on the circumference of a sphere. We can travel infinitely, sure, but the universe itself isn’t infinite. It’s simply a heartbeat, a breath. Expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction. To me it seems so obvious that it can’t be any other way. We just can’t see the whole cycle in our lifetime.
I just got the most simple and elegant explaination for two very difficult concept: Infinity and entropy that I have ever heard. This is coming from a math and chemistry teacher and I have pHd in theoretical physics so I have heard a ton of attempts at explaining entropy and infinity.
Thank you for doing a VPN ad in the responsible way that you did .
Now that's some absolute craziness that I've been expecting from The Science Asylum
I used to watch Vsauce all the time a decade ago and that was a huge inspiration for my interest in physics. Now I'm getting my PhD and get to see you talk about the same concepts in those earlier videos with a little more scientific rigor applied, it's amazing!
I didn’t know a law of truly large number existed, but I always intuitively (sort of…) thought and understood that, given an infinite amount of time, any possible event would happen at some point. Thanks for making it clearer in my mind, pal!
isn't that crazy?
that means that you can find another exact YOU in nearly infinite but certain time in the past/future universe.
I'm not convinced of this. If I have an infinite string of random numbers 0-9, one possible string is 010101010101 all the way down, never using any of the other possible numbers.
@@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke Right, so: infinity is weird.
An infinite list is itself made up of infinitely many infinite lists. This allows there to be an infinite list of 1010101010101etc and also 2020202020202etc. All of these types of lists can be contained within it.
@@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke that isnt really how it works. given an infinite set, any finite set can be found with in it. that is not to say that any infinite set can be found with in it.
@@boycefenn Hmmm there you seem to be flat out denying that there could be an infinite list of only 0's and 1's. Maybe you can expand?
I think that given a random list of numbers, the longer that list is, the less likely it will exclude some numbers (or sets of numbers) within it. The less likely it will happen to be all 0's and 1's. So for an infinitely long list, you might say it's infinitely unlikely to end up with all 1's and 0's.
That's the strongest rebuttal to what I said I can think of. But I don't think it works, because every unique end result should have the same probability, and finding patterns special is a subjective thing. Like how a royal flush has the same chance of being dealt as any other random hand of cards. Random looking hands just aren't on the winning hands list in the rules, but we could add them and they would be just as rare as a royal flush.
If a perfectly random shuffler shuffled a deck of cards, call that arrangement 1. Then it shuffles them again, the chances of getting arrangement 1 again are the same as the chances of putting the deck back into proper order, arranged by suit and size.
If an infinite set of purely 0's and 1's isn't allowed because it's too improbable, surely the same can be said of any infinite set?
It's like there's an infinitely sided dice, and then of course one of the faces does have 0's and 1's all the way, surely. That is a number, and so our infinity dice can land with that face up just as well as it can any other... surely.
:)
This might be my favorite Science Asylum video for "feeling like you're actually going crazy".
Cosmology is fantastic and brain-breaky, I love it
It’s not just a feeling if this is correct I will be crazy at some point
This gives me an equal dose of comfort and existential dread.
Welcome to cosmology 🤓😱
🤩 ahh you saw my comment. This made my day. I love your channel so much. 🥰
That's what I was thinking. It's comforting because if anything that can happen will happen eventually, then that guarantees infinite bliss, but it also guarantees infinite suffering.
@@princesseuphemia1007 bliss feels good because suffering exists. There's no up without down. No good without bad.
I'll take existence over voidness everytime.
@@lugaidster Maybe, but I've always wondered if this "we need bad because without it good wouldn't exist" argument isn't just a justification we came up with because we happen to live in a universe with a lot of bad in it that we haven't yet found a way to escape, and since we can't escape it, we have to come up with reasons for why it's okay or why it's better than the theoretical universe with either less or no bad as we know it in our own, just to make it easier to deal with emotionally. The only way we could truly know if the universe with both good and bad in it is better is if we could live in the universe without and then come back and compare the two, but we can't do that. All we can do is try to find meaning in the universe we were dealt, so we come up with reasons why things like intense suffering and death have a good side actually. Whether or not they actually do, I don't know, but it's something to consider.
"An infinite future guarantees an infinite past in an ever expanding space." My mind has just been infinitely blown!
Modular forms and elliptic curves!
Infinite fire revolving around infinite parallels
Fractals of infinite reality
Each cascading, gliding in an infinite wheel!
Tell me the true nature of my reality!
- Ziltoid
Not if the future started at one point.
Your brain kinda small as fuck. Sorry.
@@notionSlave Ohmigod! A good old fashioned troll! Please continue. You have everyone's attention.
@@notionSlave your comment is like the bad voices on a datura trip
I always look forward to your videos!
A lot of so called scientists either understand math more than they understand science, or they are just terrible at communicating.
You are very good at making things conceptual and more reasonable
Thanks! 🤓
“So you’re telling me there’s a chance”
I'd be lying if that quote didn't pop into my head when he said that.
I miss the longer end Q&A in the good old times
That got out of handle. There was one video where the Q&A was longer than the actual video.
@@ScienceAsylum And it was great!
@@ScienceAsylum It might feel odd for you as creator but for me as viewer it was just part of your style and I always watched (end enjoyed) it to the end.
I had a hard time understanding how hilbert's hotel could be full and still have room, until I realized it mimic's my eating pattern....
The real mind Funk with infinity isn't that everything that is possible happens...it's that everything that is possible happens an infinite number of times...
Yea, infinite worlds hypothesis can pretty much exist within the same universe.
please go further with this topic!
There's an infinite number of identical universes to ours, occurring at every moment in time possible.
I once tried explaining this concept to someone who claimed that human existence would be meaningless unless humans can create an eternal consciousness. I said that if the universe is eternal, then the chances are an eternal consciousness already exists, because eternity extends both to the past and future, and given eternity, anything that can exist must exist now. He didn't get what I was saying and called me a religious idiot.
@@vejymonsta3006 it doesn't have to be multiple universes, in an infinite universe, if there are a finite number of configuration of atoms, than all configurations exist.
Me at the Hilbert hotel:
"Hello room service?"
"Hi this is room infinity plus one, I'd like to order something truly random."
3 cheers to the Indian mathematician *Ramanujan* who taught the concept of *infinity* to the world👍
Me at Hilbert hotel: so glad that my arrival will annoy an infinite number of customers, mwahahaha!
you mean 'neighbor'? there are only infinite number of rooms, so you are not in the hotel ; D you need to look up this guy called Aleph i think
@@CMDRunematti I'm the guy setting up a tent up on the roof.
There must also be an infinite number of room service lines otherwise they would always be too busy to answer.
LIBRARY OF BABEL
I remember when I first found that, mind boggling
It's so mind blowing!
It's from a short story by George Luis Borges.
Sorry to be that guy... but that site is just smoke and mirrors. The phrase you're searching for gets hashed, and used as a random seed to generate the background gibberish, and the position the text is found, as well as what book/shelf/page, etc. IT'S A LIE!
@@graybot8064 It's not a lie, it still does what it says. I still think a reversible hash is cool. Theoretically everything is written in there, it just needs to be looked up.
In an infinite amount of time these 13 minutes are worth it.
Great video as always Nick! I have a thought from your video: since universe is expanding, there're more and more space/room created every second. And as space expands there're more configurations for particles to be in. So the likelihood of them being in a single spot decreases as space expands. As the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, the probability of a "big bang" repeating itself decreases exponentially. While time is only increasing linearly. Granted that possiblity never goes to zero and with infinite time it always "can" happen, but it's getting less and less likely.
🤔 Interesting. I need to think about this a while.
Actually, the remnants running away from their causal patches. It is forbidden to go back to the low entropy state again since the universe is expanding.
Afaik anything outside of the Local Group containing the Milky Way, Andromeda, and their satellite galaxies will eventually be flying away faster than the speed of light.
@@ScienceAsylum On top of that, in an accelerated expanding universe, at some point, each particle will move away from every other particle faster than light (since their distance is greater than the observable universe now). From that point on, it IS impossible for them to ever clump together again. And after the big rip (which i think is also a inevitable consequence of an accelerated expanding universe?) it is even impossible for atoms to ever form again, no? Infinite time cannot fix that in my opinion.
Infinity is a concept, not a number. Very rightly said Nick. All weird things are supposed to happen at infinity. For an e.g. parallel lines (or parallel beam of light rays) meet at infinity.
I have always liked to imagine in my head that big bang is not the beginning of universe because an ever flowing journey such as universe' can't begin with a finite event. It doesn't feel right. So 'probably' an infinite number of big bangs had already happened in the past, and an infinite number of big bangs will happen in the future as well.
Thanks a lot Nick for this wonderful video. Somehow I feel relieved now. 😊
Wow, by far your best video ever. The simplest explanation of entropy I’ve ever seen, a simple explanation of Hilberts hotel, a great explanation of infinity, followed by a thought provoking idea about the origin of our universe….. what did you eat for breakfast?????? 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
In infinite time, I have typed this sentence and you have read it an infinite number of times. You have give it an infinite number of 👍. Thank you, again. 😁
I don't recommend staying at Hilbert's hotel. Management is terrible. They kept waking me up and moving me to a different room. Ridiculous!
Not only can BBs happen in an infinite future, they will happen in an infinite future. Your explanation of infinity and the use of the monkey and atoms in a room is excellent!
"Ford, there's an infinite amount of monkeys outside, and they want to discuss a screenplay by Shakespeare, they have worked out.."
- Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
That simply implies that Shakespeare was equivalent to an infinite number of monkeys. But aren't we all?
The biggest problem I see with this is that the probability of all particles coming back together into a singularity is not constant over time, it is ever decreasing as the universe expands. For instance, if the current period of exponential expansion of the universe, where the Hubble constant indeed stays constant, persists, the particles per volume would evolve something like this: d_t = d_0*e^t where d_0 is the particles per volume at the current time, t is the time in seconds and e the fraction of particles per volume remianing after one second of expansion at the current rate (and is thus < 1). If we integrate that from 0 to infinity we get -d_0/log(e), log(e) is a negative number, so we get a finite, positive number. If we assume that the probability of the universe randomly rearranging itself into a (near) singularity is linearly dependent on the density of the universe, we get that this is not actually inevitable, even with infinite time.
What's more, the expansion of space is faster than the speed of light across large enough distances. Partcles which are too far apart can actually never reach eachother again, even if they spend the rest of eternity speeding towards eachother at light speed.
Yeah this is a very satisfying theory philosophically, but the fact that the probability is decreasing at an exponential rate makes it unlikely even given infinite time.
And that's not even considering that even things like quantum tunneling can't "move" matter faster than light to overcome faster than light expanding space.
Was about to make identical point, less then math, as I never studied physics academically. 2nd law of thermodynamics explicitly talks about a CLOSED system. Issue is the universe, because of its inflation, looks more like an open system, hence it is illogical to apply this law to the whole universe.
You said it better than I....
I mean, as time approaches infinity, isn't it becoming exceedingly likely that quantum fluctuations alone cause local high energy spots? That is the nice thing about this idea I'd say.
My problem with it, is that it is exponentially more likely (as far as I know) to form a universe with just 1 galaxy, which then forms a planet that supports human life over time. But our universe is waaay bigger. Unless it is necessary for it to be so big, to be able to form something like earth, what gives?
@@szamszatan A Closed system is a system in which there is no energy exchange with the surroundings. So IMO the universe is indeed is a closed system.
I really appreciate your content and delivery Nick. You are able to make it more digestible for the layman. Good shit Sir.
Hey Crazy o/
Papa
@Luuk van den Akker We just have to find a way for our very different styles to mesh 😉
Now you have to do your version of Hilberts Hotel :-)
@Luuk van den Akker how did you make that face?
@@ScienceAsylum maybe make someone who has both of your 🧬🧬🧬🧬🧬🧬🧬
Best description of entropy I have heard yet
I thought about this at some point after learning about the second law of thermodynamics because I was trying to make myself feel better. Then I read an essay by Isaac Asimov that matched my thinking, and now I've seen this video. Well Nick's and Isaac's smarts are enough to make me feel validated.
I commented about this last time and
Here's your new video!
❤️
Best video so far. I knew all of these methaphors, monkey, library, hotel well, but you made it all so easy and digestable then to explain something so insanely complex as the big bang! Brilliant and a lot of fun!!
Infinity is the singularity's roommate ✴️
Actually i don't believe vin the idea of Big Bang
I think all the matter of universe was always present here just in some different form🤔
More like... long lost identical twin, separated at birth?
@@just_a_curious_thinker can you stop spamming same and ill-informed sentance in all these comments?
Most of the currently-observable universe will not be causally connected anymore in, say, 100 billion years because of (accelerating) universe expansion. How can those elementary particles so far apart get close together without violating special relativity?
Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
The probability field of every particle extends to infinity in all directions, and is never perfectly zero.
In a sense, at every moment all particles have a non zero chance to be in the same location.
No movement needed.
@@erumaaro6060 That doesn't explain the causal disconnect. Probability fields can't propagate faster than light?
@@Tom-u8q That's a tricky question, but it doesn't matter in this case. (i think?)
You only need propagation if there is a change.
Fields are always and everywhere.
A particle can potentially be observed / interacted with, as long as the probability is not zero, regardless of distance and relative speed of other particles.
Just like the Tunnel-effect, the particle suddenly "jumps" to a region it couldn't possibly get to via continuous motion.
I don't know how this "jump" affects the probability field though, if at all....
ლ(ಠ_ಠ ლ)
this might interest you:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-tunneling-is-not-instantaneous-physicists-show/
It depends on whether it's physically possible that something might make the whole space-time change in a shrinking way at a certain point instead of expanding.
Once we move away from thinking about time as a purely durational dimension, we will quickly unite quantum and relativity. You are on the right track here. :)
You make very deep and perfect videos. You deserve more subscription. Underrated channel.
1:25 or does it ?
Vsauce music starts to play
Content is getting ridiculously better.. did you build a Time Machine???
The chances of you and Veritasium both posting same day on Hilbert Hotels seems unreasonable :)
Random convergence in an infinite timescape. It just supports my point 😉
If you have trouble reconciling an infinite future with a finite past, bear in mind that Hilbert's Hotel has an infinite number of rooms, but it also has a first room.
And 1/3 of the rooms have odd numbers
It's not hard to imagine a hotel with a first room, but it's weird that our universe would be endless in every direction except one, and it's difficult to imagine a moment with no previous moment. We're always going to think that _something_ must have come before now, even if now were the first moment. How can there ever be no "before"? It boggles the mind.
The Hilbert's hotel also has an infinite number of people in the hallways transitioning to the next room. It's not possible to fill the Hilbert's hotel in a finite amount of time.
Hmm interesting but if they actually started with one room and kept adding rooms, at what point could the hotel have reached an infinite number? It's impossible that way. The hotel had to have infinite rooms from the start.
And an infinite corridor between each room
Subscribed because of the VPN ad spot. Zero disinformation, 100% scientifically rigorous marketing. I lose a lot of faith when I see people advertising something they don't understand to begin with. Very pleasantly surprised!
@5:22 - The Law of Truly Large Numbers:
That's the same explanation I use for extraterrestrial life.
Life happened once, so there is a chance.
Any chance "multiplied by infinity" is 100%.
So there are some out there.
Thanks for finally giving me the name for this law. I always wondered if it's actually a thing.
I mean that's kind of the whole premise of the Fermi Paradox, the Paradox being that we don't see any evidence of said extraterrestrial life that we should expect (according to this premise at least, which has also been contested ofcourse)
@@l1mbo69 but isn't it in general also hard to find evidence of life? I mean the planet must be located in the Goldy luck zone and needs to have water+carbon and maybe there is a huge random chance that the first microorganism can originate in such conditions. On top of that, everything we see is the past which means there is a certain limit to our visibility to detect life. Which means there aren't infinite places we can look for life
@@AstralBlader1 I already said it is contested and a plethora of arguments have been made to explain the "paradox"/ defend it.
That being said, most formulations of Fermi Paradox concern itself with only the Milky Way. The argument is that if an intelligent life only evolved a few million years ago in the opposite corner of the milky way it would have enough time to colonize the entire galaxy as it's only 200,000 light years across. At 5% Light speed travel they would need only 4 Million years. Compare millions of years to how much we have achieved in only last 10K years. Not only that, but they don't even have to physically travel themselves. Self replicating robots can be left to their own devices as they go from planet to planet and they will colonize the galaxy exponentially fast. And this is all just for a few million years at the max, the galaxy has been around for thousands- or multiple billion years.
So if intelligent alien life evolved, and also wanted to form an intergalactic civilization they could have done so without a shadow of doubt.
So A) intelligent life never emerged B) life in general never emerged C) intelligent life went extinct before becoming intergalactic D) intelligent life may not even want to colonize the galaxy (live out there lives in VR perhaps)
To summarize, according to the law of Truly Large Numbers as it applies to ET life.. we should have already found A LOT of evidence of ET life, even just in our little corner of the Milky Way. Earth would/should have been "colonized" long, long ago.
Welp, gotta watch it again to make sure I understand everything
Ok. Now this is one of the best theories I have ever seen.
It takes one of my favourite fun facts , the infinite monkey theorem, and kinda predicts the existence of a multiverse... Or a future that is not so cold and uneventful
Thank you for such amazing content.. It was really so much effort into one video.. Keep doing the great work..
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
"Everything that has a beginning, has an end" - The Oracle.
Of course, she could be wrong.
I always thought that was a sly way of stating the corollary - some things have always been, and will always continue to be - like her way of telling Neo that something of his spirit/life force/etc existed before his mortal life and would continue afterward, and that his sacrifice would be towards something bigger than him, even if his body's death is inevitable.
Well, the point of the video was that the universe has no end, and therefor it has no beginning.
This is compatible with the statement of the (fictional😉) oracle.
"Beauty and harmony, governed by one eternal law, all that begins must end." - Shogun 2 Total War
Yeah she has to be wrong or there have to be no natural numbers
As always -- I LOVE this video too -- it is a pure perfection in wording used. Another Nick Lucid's masterpiece.
The 'Crap Ton'💩 is my new favorite unit! 😄
Someone wrote graffiti on a bathroom wall at my favorite coffee shop: "in an ever expanding universe random chance eliminates the impossible."
Ahaha "Things Explainer", just received it, I have to find the time to read it! BTW, I just discovered your channel and really enjoying it!
We were waiting for this forever, like since infinite time you haven't uploaded.
Actually there are infinitely many people (creatures) who have already seen this exactly one time. Or infinite times?
@@e38383 and in infinite devices
@@just_a_curious_thinker does india have a 50 cent army now? seriously, stop spamming
I like how this guy brings philosophy in physics, I like that
Physics without philosophy is boring.
Fun fact about the library of babel : Some of the books contains a lot of information, but the entire library contains a very small quantity of information.
I CANNOT believe I found a video perfectly explaining my own hypothesis on the nature of the universe. I've wondered about the possibility that time is actually infinite backwards as well as forwards. I've wondered if our neighborhood of infinite spacetime which we call "the universe" is a tiny and insignificant speck among infinite neighborhoods, separated in space and time by distances unfathomable magnitudes larger than the neighborhoods themselves, but still occupying the same fabric of spacetime that we do. Infinity could be infinitely larger than not only the observable universe, but the unobservable universe, and change how the universe looks beyond the unobservable universe. Who are we to say that the pattern of galaxies that we can see stretches on forever? It could go on for 100,000 septillion lightyears, but then nothing blackness for even more distance than that until there is another neighborhood. When I've asked very educated science-minded people about the singularity and the Big Bang, I often get very definitive answers. "There was no before the Big Bang, that doesn't make sense and here's why. There was no space outside of the singularity, the universe was once the size of the singularity and it continued to expand forever after the Big Bang." Given how theses things are taught, I didn't think I'd find a serious physicist (serious enough lol) actually entertain the idea as if it may be true. Given the size of infinity, I find it very possible the sudden expansion of spacetime that we call the Big Bang was a local event, able to occur due to the sheer quantum possibilities opened up by infinite time, and not an event that lead the expansion of all spacetime everywhere. This doesn't conflict with relativity because while the central location of the Big Bang might be discernable in such a universe, it would be far from the only one, and not the center of the universe. Is there harsh resistance to this idea among scientists? I think we may be uncomfortable acknowledging an idea that indicates the universe is actually so large and non-uniform that cosmology, the science of studying the universe as a single object, is essentially a hopeless endeavor, and in addition to no hope of ever being able to verify whether or not this is the case at all. I guess part of my surprise about hearing this hypothesis coming from a scientist is how untestable it is, which scientists tend to call not science. I get why, but that approach seems take ideas that may exist in actual reality, but aren't testable, and throw them in with mermaids.
An actual infinite is impossible. That's the whole point of Hilbert's Hotel. Just like it would be absurd to add guests to an infinite hotel where a all the rooms are full by moving each guest to the next room, it would be absurd to add another cycle to an infinite number of cycles. Think about it. If there is an infinite number of cycles before we get to this cycle, then we can't get to this cycle.
You've convinced me, we live in a simulation.... or every possible future exists. I'm thinking I dismissed Sean Carroll awhile back (with his many universes) too hastily....
This reminds me what I told to my ex the day I left: ¨Love is eternal as long as it lasts¨ (Turin, May 2001)
I think I’ve watched this video 5 times now. Love it every single time
"If the future is infinite, anything that can happen, will... eventually." the problem I see is, if every particle in the universe is moving away from every other at the speed of light, then all of those particles coming back to one spot becomes impossible because the furthest particles would be beyond the cosmic horizon. Right?
Yeah. As much as I love this proposal it doesn't seem to account for the expansion of space itself.
@@Fade2GrayOG it doesn't have to be all of the particles happening to all meet up at a single point. Random fluctuations of energy happen all the time in empty space, due to the uncertainty principle. Usually these are very small fluctuations, but what's to stop a sudden, incredibly dense high energy fluctuation from occurring in an empty light-bubble of spacetime 10^^^^^^^^^^^^^10 years from now?
It requires the big bang to spontaneously come into being. Not just from entropy collecting back into a point. Thing is we know it's possible because of the fact we exist, so there must eventually have been the first 'fluctuation' of entropy that given enough time created a universe. That is the only thing that makes sense to me. We have already existed infinitely many times and will be existing again at some point simply because time is infinite. If all of time and space just stopped and became 'nothing', it would be reborn again because some tiny particle needs to go from a higher to a lower state of energy even though moments before it wasn't in a state of entropy at all.
@Remember The FutureAn interesting what if. It is not that the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, per say. Instead the distance between objects gets larger and at a certain point the distance becomes so large that in order, get from one galaxy to the next a person would have to go faster than the speed of light in order to reach the next galaxy. Use the balloon analogy. If you draw any number of points on the surface then blow it up. Every single point would appear to move away from each other. As the balloon gets larger the points move away from each other faster. At a certain distance if you were on one point, the others would appear as if they are receding away faster than the speed of light but it is not. Because the points are not moving (if you deflate the balloon, the points would be right where you drew them), the space between them is expanding. I will admit, if we stick with the balloon analogy there are 3 outcomes. It keeps expanding forever, it pops, or it deflates. While all three are theoretically possible, there is no reason to believe either of the latter since the former is what is happening right now, and has been happening since the begining of what time we could measure. Both of the latter options "could" happen but I'm going with Occam's razor and sticking with the simple solution until we find even thale smallest bit of evidence that contradicts the current state of the universe. Thank you for listing to my TED talk.
One of my thoughts is that if Dark Energy is everywhere in the universe, working like a reverse Gravity, then maybe once all of the particles in the Universe have expanded to the point where the pull from Dark Energy is magnified at a certain point that it causes another Big Bang. Imagine an infinite pull from all sides, ripping a hole in spacetime itself.
holy shit, you've solved it
@@moqwa2597 right? quick, what is one of your other thoughts?!
Wow okay that's a very very honest and factually accurate vpn ad. I was expecting the usual "overselling" marketing phrases but you surprised me and showed you value your integrity of your labour. Props to you!
But... while the probability of those air molecules being concentrated in one corner of the room is incredibly small ... isn‘t the probability of a universe expanding faster than the speed of light to clump together again exactly 0?
It‘s called cosmic event horizon for a reason, right?
This is what I kept thinking about as well. Unlikely != impossible.
I was thinking the same. Then it hit me: Quantum tunnelling.
The probability that a particle would quantum tunnel somewhere decreases rapidly with distance, but it never reaches zero. So the probability that a particle from your body would quantum tunnel to somewhere outside the observable universe is extremely (and I mean EXTREMELY) low, but it is not zero. This breaks the speed limit that us mortals are cursed with, that is, the speed of light.
Of course, this was considering a single particle. The probability that all the particles in the universe quantum tunneling to the exact same location to start a big bang is, once again, mind bogglingly small. Although mind boggingly small != 0, so the premise of the video still stands.
I am not a physicist, just curious about these topics and learned it all from TH-cam, so take all that I say with a grain of salt. But who knows, it just might be that this is the answer.
@@MertcanEkiz I did not know this... I'll have to go find some paper on this. Even if I do find one, I'll probably not understand any of it. Lmao
Don't you think that when expansion reached the speed of light time would stop? Or even reverse?
@@Raven74947 The universe is already expanding faster than the speed of light. But space itself is moving apart not an object in space, so no relativistic effects.
Back when the CMBR was together the Universe formed a collosal living brain. Then the Universe died and we've been living in its corpse.
[nathan explosion voice] metal.
Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame, but also the book God's Debris) approves.
Your thumbnail is really cool for this one. Keep up the great videos!
Very cool background! :-)
7:11 That depends on what type of infinity you're talking about. If we're working with infinite ordinal numbers, addition isn't commutative. The first infinite ordinal is usually denoted ω. 3+ω=ω≠ω+3. Vsauce did a video on this a while ago called "How to count past infinity."
If we're working with the infinite cardinal numbers (yes, mathematicians *do* call them numbers), then addition is commutative and adding finite numbers to them doesn't change anything.
To be fair though, in the context Nick is talking about, it makes the most sense to consider infinity as a limit, in which case it's just shorthand for a function or process which grows arbitrarily large.
I think it would help us a lot to think about infinity as a number of a different type. Similar to imaginary or complex numbers. Infinity is the result of 1/0. Lets call it I. So x=3/0 is 3*I. And this I is not a number on the number line but all numbers at the same time. Like a function with multiple solutions. Same with imaginary numbers this might have consequences in physics. Especially relativity, singularities and quantum mechanics. Just my 2 Cent
Wow we’re really watching you learn as you speak,. Keep pumpin
I barely understand but still watch because i love these videos.
Yeah same, sometimes I almost think I get it until they tell me that explanation was just the really simplified version
@@Myname-il9vd basically, every quantum physics video ever.
@@SounakXD I swear I go through the 5 stages of grief every time I watch a pbs space time video
I think this was one of the easier ones to follow. Just need to grasp some mathematical concepts.
Sure, I do.
There's one about to happen in about 38 seconds - just 'bout a 104 millimetres from your left ear.
Hmmm...
Y'all, might wanna move just a little bit to your right.
'K.
Maybe, juuuust a bit more than that - y'know, like 5.713 tera light years...
Great video, so cool 😁
Thanks! 🙂
I just had a crazy but fascinating thought: since the universe was uniform when it began ( even if enclosed in a very, very, very small amount of space); could it be that after the universe we live in results in a "uniform" emptiness in the far future, that itself is the new point from which the next big bang will occur? Essentially making that unimaginably large amount of space, the next "point" for the next big bang- the universe that comes from that, would be orders of magnitude bigger than what we have today, but the civilizations of that bigger universe wouldn't even know the difference. I hope that made sense!
Last time I was early, I has this ball of pure energy about to explode
You’re goku?
06:28 Infinity + Pop Corn =
One hypotesis that you brought during the whole video about the room and molecules is that it was in a FINITE room with INFINTE amount of time to colapse into the corner, but as you said later, the universe if INFINITE in space (all directions) and INIFNITE in time (one direction). So to think about convergence in and INFINITE amount of time of the particles you need to consider which INFINITE is "bigger" and if there can exist a limit of which one is growing faster ...
BTW if true, this also means that every conscious person, being a finite pattern, occurs an infinite number of times. "You" are a somewhat fuzzy pattern, changing as you grow older and gain experience from this instance. "You" are closest, statistically to most other humans, particularly relatives and those sharing your life, but there is a spectrum all the way down to insects (and below?).
If there is one 'field' of consciousness, then free will is expressing a choice to change your pattern, to move it along the field in a desirable/optimal direction. You would expect that those who use the universe around them to forge their ideas would converge on similar patterns, become more alike...and they do. One might even speculate on a "merging" (becoming overlapped, or similar to a large degree) of such like minds, as they are all following the same giant script. (Buddha, God, etc.)
Those who prefer constructs that are not based on the universe around them (dogma) tend to make up any old shit, of which there is an infinite supply, and so will always diverge from others rather than converge. So although there are infinite ways to descend into irrational "hell", there are also infinite paths to the common good, and infinite time to get there.
Metaphysics can be scary, but as a guru once said: If you must fall down a well, a bottomless one is the best kind.
I believed this when I was a child, really I thought thats what reality was when I was 2-3 years old, I think it was similar to Murphy's law, stating that everything that can happen will happen, and never stop, apply infinite possibilities to infante time, every possibly will be exercised, but not by a sequence, so life is going to be experienced like this again because we know it's possible as we are here now, but upon further thinking if it was like a quantum lottery, say each atom was a lottery ball numbered, the odds of each atom being the way it is say like predicting the lottery everyday for a thousand years, then although it's possible, the odds are astronomical and I dont think every possibility would be, but saying that, time never ending, I really dont know, I think we sre part of a greater conscious one that will return, I hope not but I fear this is our reality.
@@darrenhenderson6921 This is probably a childhood intuiton of the concept of *possibillities* for the first time.
@@Δενβρισκωνικ That's the lottery winner paradox. The person who wins the ticket feels special since the odds were low but for the lottery organization it was ~100% chanse of having *SOMEONE* win since that's the rules they arranged.
Metaphysical mumbo jumble.... But hey you'd do great in a philosophy discussion.
When I was a kid, the universe was not infinite, only it had no boundaries. Now it's infinite. It's crazy how things change with age :D
Nothing has changed. There’s been two options: either its infinite, or its finite. If finite, then it probably has no boundary (space will not be flat, but curved.) If its infinite, then there’s probably no boundary (space will be flat.)
There are other scenarios, but these are the two most likely.
No boundaries to a finite curved space time is analogous to the surface of our moon. There is a finite amount of surface area, but you can walk in any given direction just as far as you wish, and never come to an end.
We are inside the big bang, science told me that it originated from everywhere when I asked "where was the big bang", they told me that because all the matter in the universe came from the big bang. My question should have been, "Which point is most matter moving away from." The singularity may have been bigger than the observable universe, but we can still pinpoint its center by following the direction of most mass backward. It has boundaries, just like any other explosion/expansion but outside the big bang has no boundaries that we could ever be aware of.
@@crazyfakar1 There is no central point to everything. The big bang just means that things started to move away from everything else, equally. If it exploded, then yes, there’d be a central point, but there isn’t. But its not even that stuff is moving, but rather the space between stuff is increasing. An expanding balloon helps to visualize.
@@tbardoni5065 Even a balloon has a centre, science can't tell because the singularity was bigger than the observable universe, if it is expanding then it is expanding away from somewhere, from here it looks like it is expanding from everywhere, because of relative motion and the doppler effect, but if the big bang was smaller, we could easily see. From outside the big bang, it would be a different story. The big bang might not be the entire universe. "Everything moved away from everything equally" Not the matter that makes me, it all moved together, came together to make me. That would be entropy at its finest, everything equally being equal to everything else.
Thank you for reminding me what the Library of Babel was called. Heard about it years ago, thought it was awesome, and then forgot the name/url and couldn't remember the specific video I saw it in lol. After all this time I finally can share it again.
That got me thinking if we really take law of large numbers into account then it is also certain that long after a person dies, the particles in the universe would recreate a perfect copy of his body and brain and his consciousness as well for that matter, which implies that death is nothing but a long sleep, that is profound, isn't it? 🙂
You can apply the same principle for space instead of time as well. There is a finite amount of way in which you can arrange particles in space roughly the size of a human. So given infinite space, it is likely that the exact arrangement of particles in your body is present right now somewhere really really far.
@@SaravanaKumar-dd7re yes I knew that already its about the distance of 10^70 metres from you less than googol metres though, numberphile had a great video on that go check that out, it's titled somewhat related to the googol number. Thanks for sharing nonetheless. 🙂
@@suyashverma15 yeah I probably knew about this from that video only 😁
What about the expansion, though? Everything is flying away from everything else (on the cluster level at least). How could random walks result in everything coming together again? Also, isn't the expansion faster than the speed of light on large enough scales?
Exactly, at some point every single particle is going to be so far from eachother that they'd have to go faster than the speed of light to meet again
all paradoxes can be reconciled
Time is nothing but the perception of change. Space is nothing but a change of perception.
@Remember The Future the speed of expansion is the same everywhere but it isn't necessarily the speed of light. The more space, the more expansion between two bodies. The smaller the universe gets, the slower the compression.
wow that observable universe diagram with the big bangs going off outside, while understanding that we have an infinite past was a T R I P P
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to clean up the mess my mind made after being blown to smithereens. 🤯
First of all, this is a great video on a really thought provoking topic. But I do have a nagging question. If the universe carries on expanding to such an extent that most particles in it are causally disconnected from one another, how can they all condense into a single point to produce a singularity?
There are definitely problems that would need to be addressed. Ludwig Boltzmann came up with this before we knew the universe was expanding. Then again, it was also before quantum mechanics, so there might be a solution there.
Btw, if understood the idea correctly, there is a possibility that big bangs happen infinitely in different places, and our big bang is not a unique one. So elementary particles constantly fly in the infinite space in all directions, and from time to time some amount of particles happen to be in one place giving birth to a new big bang.
But in this case there must be some amount of particles flying into our "big bang bubble" from the "outside".
Is there any evidence of that?
@@ScienceAsylum Quantum fluctuations can be any size. Large ones are just less likely.
So, if I understand correctly, this video is saying we have few reasons to believe our current model of the universe will allow matter to come together again to fuel another big bang. I understand and agree. I wouldn't say this necessarily disproves recurring big bangs though. Just casts doubt on this specific theory.
In order for us to really know, we'd need insight on why our big bang happened (and whether it might happen again). It's a black box though. We have no idea what came before and there's a good chance we never will. I see why this is more akin to a philosophical debate. It's borders on being metaphysical.
Hilbert's Hotel - Veritasium uploaded a (faulty) video about it just a couple of days ago, titled _"How to Exceed Infinity."_ Causally related, or just coincidence? Because, as you said, given enough time, it was guaranteed that two guys would independently mention it in their videos just days apart.
(And yes, I noticed your Vsauce t-shirt. Nice!)
Out of interest, why do you say Veritasium's video is faulty?
@@ebenolivier2762 Because Derek assumes that there are an *uncountably* infinite number of passengers in the last bus. That's wrong because the passengers are discrete individuals, not continuous like points in a plane. So they are *countably* infinite.
@@ebenolivier2762
A more detailed explanation:
Derek uses infinitely long strings of A and B as passenger names. These are, of course, equivalent to real numbers, which are uncountably infinite. He assigns these real numbers to passengers. Then he says, without proof, that all the real numbers have been assigned to all the passengers. That's the mistake.
Next, he tries to assign the same real numbers to the countably infinite hotel rooms. Using Cantor's diagonal, he shows that many real numbers are left out. So the real numbers outnumber the hotel rooms-that's not in doubt. But because earlier he incorrectly assumed that there are as many passengers as real numbers, he concludes-incorrectly-that there are more passengers than rooms.
To see why he's wrong about the passenger size, you can apply the same Cantor's diagonal to the real numbers and the passengers, and show that there are fewer passengers than real numbers. For sure, he removed the seats in the bus to make this correspondence difficult, but that didn't change the passengers from countably infinite to uncountably infinite.
So the correct conclusion is that you can always accommodate any number of passengers in the hotel.
Note that if say there's nothing wrong in assuming that the passengers are uncountably infinite, then there's nothing preventing the number of rooms from being uncountably infinite either. So again you can accommodate all of them.
@@nHans Okay so you're not nitpicking his actual argument, but how the the video is presented. He never had to prove that the number of passengers in the last bus was equivalent to the size of the real numbers, because that's how he DEFINED the bus in a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT. Saying that the passengers can't be uncountable because a passenger is something discrete rather than continuous is like saying that there can't be an infinite number of passengers because there's no such thing as an infinitely long bus. True if we're applying real world logic, but missing the point of the video.
@@nHans I can't see anything wrong with the way he presented it. No proof is required that all the real numbers are assigned to passengers, this is the definition of the bus. He even says: "On this bus there is a person with every possible sequence of these 2 letters". This doesn't need to be proved, it is a statement of what the bus (a set) contains (all the real numbers). Following on from this statement is the fact that you cannot assign all real numbers (passengers) to integers (hotel rooms). As with all analogies this hotel analogy does not have the rigor of a mathematical proof, but I think his presentation of David Hilbert's analogy is as good as it can get.
That last one was a reference to Boltzmann brain right? I understood that!!! Oh yeah... 😎😎
Yes it was 🙂
Infinity cannot be comprehended. It exists conceptually outside of our understanding and does allow anything to happen eventually. The fact that anything exists ever is mind blowing
damn !amazing bruh
Long time after❤❤❤
I think I never commented this: i admire your way of explaining.
Few days ago i grabbed my camera and explained an easy topic "linear motion". After watching my own attemt I recognized: i'm sooooo slooooow :D it was funny
It takes practice. If you look back at my early stuff, you'll see I was terrible when I first started too.
I just recently finished all your videos from old to new. It was such a great journey. looking forward becoming a patreon asap :D
"don't do that don't give me hope"